There is widespread consensus among Nigerians that President Bola Tinubu is stupendously wealthy from his time as Lagos State governor between 1999 and 2007, and installing his puppets as his successors since. But what a former boss of a federal agency revealed to Naijiant.com was shocking to say the least, with the source even admitting to finding the incidents jaw-dropping, especially the brazenness of it all.
The first happened shortly after Tinubu took office in 2023. The agency boss was invited to the presidential villa to see the president. He was told to bring $500,000 in cash to “greet the president”.
As he was appointed by the previous regime, he assumed he had to play ball in order to be in good terms with the new kids on the block and also assumed that the cash was for those in the corridors of power to grease access to the president. So he arrived with the money at Aso Rock, expecting it to be requested on arrival or by one of the presidential aides. No such request was forthcoming and he was ushered into the president’s office.
Tinubu then walked in asked the source how he was and asked “where is the money”. The man couldn’t believe what he was witnessing but sheepishly passed the bag with $500,000 in cash to the president.
A few months later, as the boss of the agency was about to consider bids for a big contract, he got a message from the presidency saying it should be awarded to a certain company and the company boss should pay $5m in cash. The federal agency boss did as was instructed and informed the contract award winner to be ready with the money for a visit to the presidential villa.
When they got an appointment with the president, the agency boss and the contract award winner showed up with the cash. The president openly asked for the money, before the two visitors could react, someone whispered something in the president’s ear. The president then mumbled something about “any recording by DSS will be deleted” and “they can’t do anything with it”.
Our source wasn’t quite sure whether this meant that the president was warned that the secret police (Department of State Services) may be recording him taking bribes. But whatever it meant, it resulted in the cash not being handed over to Tinubu. The source said it was hard for him to believe that the president was accepting the bribes in cash and by himself. Supposedly standard operating procedure was for fronts and underlings to handle the “hot money”.
