“I Created An Economic And Recovery Path For Lagos”- Tinubu Brags, Says He Doesn’t Own Oriental Hotels And Other Assets Linked To Him In Lagos.
There have been rumors that Mr. Tinubu is the owner of the Oriental Hotel and other assets in Lagos’ Lekki area.
The majority of the buildings including the Oriental Hotels, Civic Center, and other properties in Lagos related to the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Bola Tinubu are not his, he has admitted.
In a documentary about his accomplishments as governor of Lagos State, Mr. Tinubu said that he only created the conditions for investors to make investments in the Lekki Corridor.
The former governor said in an excerpt that was shared on Twitter by Jubril Gawat, a media assistant to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, that the entire Lekki Corridor was a garbage pit that required months to clean up.
*Oriental Hotels
There have been rumors regarding who owns the Oriental Hotel located along the popular Ozumba Mbadiwe road.
Hoodlums attacked the hotel in the wake of the Lekki shooting in 2020, claiming that Mr. Tinubu owned the property.
The incident caused the Western Metal Product Company, the building’s owners, to make a statement regarding the hotel’s ownership.
The WEMCO organization owns all of the hotels’ shares, according to Taiwo Ali, the Executive Director of WEMCO.
In the midst of the 2020 ENDSARS violence, a number of Mr. Tinubu-affiliated media establishments were set on fire. They are Max Radio, Television Continental, and The Nation newspaper.
“I don’t own those properties”,
Speaking in the documentary, Mr Tinubu, who was Lagos State’s governor between 1999 and 2007, said he does not own the Oriental Hotel and other properties linked to him but that his administration invested resources to clear the dumps at the place where the hotel and the civic centre are located.
“I have converted a liability confronting Lagos to an asset of great value. Along Ozumba Mbadiwe, we used to pick dead bodies. People have forgotten truck pushers in those areas. You have the dirties coastline along Ozumba Mbadiwe all through Lekki corridor.
“I brought private investors, hospitality— they created the boat club, the Civic Center that is of great value to many people today—that was a refuse dump. Nobody would easily remember that Oriental Hotel was a refuse dump— a mile of refuse along that corridor. It took several months of escalating and a great investment for those investors to take the risk. Majority of those assets they claim are mine are not mine.
The APC Presidential Candidate went on to say that he created an economic and recovery path for Lagos and there is no state that can brag of the exponential development that is going on in the Lekki Corridor.
“I created an economic and recovery path for Lagos. There is no state that can brag of the exponential development that is going on in the Lekki Corridor,” he said.
Prior to the start of the campaign on September 28 in accordance with the calendar of events and the timetable set forth by INEC, Mr. Tinubu is being questioned extensively about both his financial background and his state of health.
Taking advantage of the occasion, he urged the judiciary and the media to work with the Ministry to ensure that these economic saboteurs were not only exposed but also swiftly tried and sentenced in order to serve as a warning to others.
