The controversy about the President-elect, Bola Tinubu has taken a fresh plot after his Guinean passport, which shows that he holds dual citizenship, surfaced on social media.
On Saturday, investigative journalist David Hundeyin shared photos of a Guinean diplomatic passport bearing ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu’ and the President-elect’s image on his Twitter page. The passport was issued in October 2015 and expired in October 2020.
Hundeyin also shared a section of Tinubu’s EC-9 form — application for the presidency — issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, where the President-elect ticked “NO” in response to “Have you voluntarily acquired citizenship of any other country?”
Hundeyin’s tweet has been removed by Twitter for “violating the rules” of the micro-blogging site, but the photos have been reshared by other users.
An Aide to former President Alpha Conde of Guinea has just confirmed to me that Bola Tinubu was issued a Guinean Passport but that he was not sure if it was a Guinean Diplomatic Passport or a regular Passport. He confirmed that he took Tinubu to Conde and they became friends! pic.twitter.com/LRRmmSi8hg
— Jackson Ude (@jacksonpbn) April 16, 2023
Hundeyin’s exposé provoked an uproar in the Nigerian Twitter space, with his henchmen, especially Festus Keyamo and Bayo Onanuga who are members of the presidential campaign council of the All Progressives Congress, APC, keeping mum on the matter.
However, addressing the issue during an interview with Channels TV on Sunday, Babatunde Fashola, the Minister of Works and Housing, said he is unaware if Tinubu has dual citizenship.
“I know he carries a Nigerian passport, I don’t know about dual citizenship. I know he resided abroad when he went into exile, I don’t know if they gave him American citizenship or not,” Fashola said.
“What does that have to do with the results of the election? The last time I checked, the Nigerian constitution allows you to have dual citizenship, doesn’t it?
“I doubt that the Nigerian constitution makes you disentitled (to run for the presidency) if you have dual citizenship because the constitution allows you to have dual citizenship.”
Since he declared his interest to contest for the presidential election, Tinubu has been enmeshed in one career-shattering controversy or the other, including scandals about his identity, his educational records, and his age.
The litany of scandals intensified with his indictment in drug peddling in the United States, and his corrupt escapades as the governor of Lagos after he was declared the winner of the highly controversial February 25 presidential election.
Again, the president-elect is in the eye of the storm as allegations of holding dual citizenship have dominated public debate amid the anticipation of the judgment of the Presidential Election Tribunal on the post-election petitions by aggrieved opponents, especially Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party, respectively.
While Obi and Abubakar did not include Tinubu’s dual citizenship among their prayers and grounds on which they are challenging his eligibility to contest the last presidential election and eventual annulment of his victory, the exposé raises another legal conundrum for Tinubu as he could be found guilty of perjury.
Section 137 (1) of the Nigerian Constitution provides that: “A person shall not be qualified for election to the office of the president if – (a) subject to the provisions of section 28 of this Constitution, he has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of a country other than Nigeria or, except in such cases as may be prescribed by the National Assembly, he has made a declaration of allegiance to such other country.”
However, since courts have repeatedly interpreted that section of the Constitution as inapplicable to a Nigerian-born or a citizen born to either a Nigerian parent or both parents, it remains to be seen how the latest discovery will impact the outcome of the Tribunal’s ruling on the petitions filed by Obi, Atiku and other disgruntled candidates.
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