The Director of Strategic Communication of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, Dele Alake, says those claiming the party’s presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, changed his identity, should prove it.
“Now, let me tell you point blank that his name, as far as I know, is Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If anybody else has another name that I am not aware of and has proof of that name, let the person come forward,” Alake said when he featured on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
“Since 1999, so many things have been raised concerning his origin, concerning his name and all of that. Some names have been put in the public domain, but nobody has come to prove or show any evidence of those names being his biological names or of some people being his parents outside of those he says are his parents.
“Now, if you must allege, you must prove. You can’t just allege and then go away and assume that everybody else will be as uncritical in thinking and assume it and take it hook, line and sinker.”
Critics of the former Lagos governor had claimed that Tinubu’s is not from the state and have constantly questioned his origin.
But speaking on the show, the APC chieftain asked: “If Bola Tinubu is not his name, what is his name? How do you now show us evidence, documentary evidence, that this is the name Bola Tinubu was given at birth and not Bola Tinubu?
“As long as you can’t come up with that, as long as nobody — at least since 1999, 23 years, nobody has come up with any contrary evidence that his name is not Bola Tinubu. What do you expect me to say to that but to dismiss it as the rantings of nabobs of negativism? Nothing else.
“Some say he is not a Lagosian; he is from Iragbiji in Osun, he is from Osogbo, he is from that… What is my business with all of that? How does that affect the quality of the man’s brain?”
He went on to mention former United States President Bill Clinton in his argument.
“Clinton was not his father. Clinton was his stepfather,” he said, adding that he wanted to use the opportunity to enlighten “those who think all of these things are material”.
“It is the stuff that the man is made of (that matters). The hood does not make the monk. It is the stuff that is upstairs of the monk”.
Questions about his certificates have come to the fore after it emerged that the credentials Tinubu submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not include his primary and secondary school certificates.
Tinubu has said his certificates were carted away when the military raided his house during the fight against the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections.
The absence of the certificates has also been cited in reports as proof of claims that he went by another name in his younger days.
But Mr Alake challenged those with any certificate or documentary evidence that the claims are true
