By Olusegun Olanrewaju

Co-founder of the group, Grassroots Network for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Kehinde Bamigbetan, has reportedly said there is nothing wrong with the presence of bullion vans at the Bourdillon’s residence of the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu,

Tinubu has announced his intention to run for the 2023 presidential race in the country.

The discovery of two cash-carrying bullion vans in the presidential aspirant’s house led to serious outcry nationwide on the eve of the February 2019 presidential elections that ushered in President Muhammadu Buhari into the office for the second term.

But yesterday, Bamigbetan, a former Commissioner for Information in Lagos State, was quoted to have stated this during an interview with a news outlet, Nigeria Info’ s ‘Daily Digest’ radio programme that there was nothing wrong in the sighting of the vans.

Speaking on the radio programme aired yesterday, Bamigbetan was quoted to have said that “running an election is not a cheap affair”

The former Lagos State governor also reportedly said that ‘some circumstances’ had warranted the movement of cash during electioneering.

Pictures that went viral on the eve of the 2019 presidential election had shown two cash-laden bullion vans driving into Tinubu’s Bourdillon residence in Lagos.

The then acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, had refused to answer a question regarding a petition submitted against Tinubu for alleged money laundering.

Tinubu was not a public official in 2019.

He had stated during an interview that the money belonged to him and that he was free to distribute it to his supporters since he was not a government official.

But when told by the host of the radio programme, Jimi Disu, that the Bullion vans episode should not have happened in the first instance, Bamigbetan said, “The circumstances will determine. Let us be practical about this matter. You want to run a state-wide election.

This is two days or three days to that election; you are going to fund this across Lagos State.

“Running an election is not a cheap affair for a whole state, or for a whole country and certainly you either move the funds through the electronic system or physically. What I am just saying is that there are some circumstances that create such.

Ekiti APC to use option ‘A4’ at Governorship primary primary – Committee Chair

“It is more often because the emergency of that time required that the funds, the logistics be deployed almost immediately.”

Off the official circles, questions have often trailed Tinubu’s source of wealth “to the extent that he owns a bullion van”.

But in an earlier interview, another of Tinubu’s foot-soldiers, Abdulmumin Jibrin, as the Director-General of the Tinubu Support Management Council, had defended the credentials of his principal, saying he performed creditably when he governed ‘the Centre of Excellence, Lagos, for two terms back-to-back between 1999 and 2007.