President-elect Bola Tinubu’s main spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, asserted that his principal’s involvement in the cocaine trade in the US was insufficient to prevent the realization of his presidential ambition.
He claimed that Tinubu’s drug trafficking conviction was over ten years old and therefore could not be used to overturn his election win last month.
Onanuga made the assertion while responding to a tweet from Ayo Obe, another surrogate of Tinubu, who said the president-elect cannot be sacked by the Supreme Court because his established drug trafficking case in Chicago was already statute-barred.
“The Obidiots don’t read. They live in a cocoon of falsehood and contrived propaganda,” Onanuga lashed out at other Twitter users who called him out on his uncharitable and uncomplimentary remarks on the microblogging site.
Obe cited Section 137 (1)e) of the Constitution that said a Nigerian cannot be elected president within 10 years of a conviction for offences brought by the Code of Conduct Bureau.
“A person shall not be qualified for election to the office of President if within a period of less than ten years before the date of the election to the office of President he has been convicted and sentenced for an offence involving dishonesty or he has been found guilty of the contravention of the Code of Conduct,” the section said.
Obe, however, left out the preceding section of the Constitution, Section 137 (1)(d), that disqualified anyone who had been fined for any offences in the past from becoming president. That section, which applies to Mr Tinubu’s forfeiture of over $460,000 due to drug crimes in Chicago in 1993, did not give any timeline under which a convict can be released to run for Nigeria’s presidency.
It only said: “A person shall not be qualified for election to the office of President if he is under a sentence of death imposed by any competent court of law or tribunal in Nigeria or a sentence of imprisonment or fine for any offence involving dishonesty or fraud (by whatever name called) or for any other offence, imposed on him by any court or tribunal or substituted by a competent authority for any other sentence imposed on him by such a court or tribunal.”