Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal says

The claim matters because it surfaces at a moment when Tinubu and Osinbajo, once running mates, are increasingly viewed as rivals ahead of 2027, and because it reopens questions about undisclosed money in Nigerian campaign finance that neither man has ever addressed on record. Lawal made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview recorded for Symfoni TV and released Saturday, in which he also disclosed that former President Muhammadu Buhari harbored longstanding doubts about Tinubu's background even before the APC merger that brought both men together politically.

Lawal, who served as SGF from 2015 until his removal in 2017, told the interviewer that Tinubu "mobilised substantial funds" for the broader Buhari campaign but ran a separate financial operation for Osinbajo, whose candidacy he said had drifted from the main ticket. "Through him, we were able to raise sufficient funds to do the campaign," Lawal said, adding that Tinubu "hired a chair to fund the trip" because Osinbajo's operation was "a little bit broken away" from Buhari's.

The reasoning Lawal gave for that separation is itself notable. He said Osinbajo, a pastor, drew skepticism from some Christian voters wary of Buhari, a northern Muslim, which pushed the vice-presidential campaign toward its own machinery. "He wasn't on our own area, and he was just doing sort of semi-independent of the main campaign," Lawal said. "Tinubu was funding it."

The more specific allegation concerns American consultants. Lawal said Tinubu brought in a team he understood to have ties to Barack Obama's political operation, without being able to name them. "I don't know their names," he said. "I just know that they were Obama people, and they came and they transformed our campaign, and I knew that the money he paid them was in excess of two billion naira equivalent of dollars." No invoice, contract, or campaign finance filing has surfaced to corroborate the figure, and Lawal offered no documentary backing in the interview.

Lawal went further, describing a pattern he said characterized Tinubu's approach to campaign spending generally: bypassing the central campaign purse in favor of personal funds whenever a need arose. "If there's a need for an expenditure, no matter how massive, he doesn't come to the campaign purse, he spends from his own purse," Lawal said.

A pattern of disclosures, not a single one

Saturday's interview was not an isolated outburst. It aired alongside separate remarks in which Lawal said Buhari had access to intelligence reports on Tinubu's upbringing, genealogy and educational background and would periodically complain about him, only to be reminded by Lawal that those concerns predated the alliance. "So anytime Buhari would complain about the man, I bring up the history and Buhari, being a man of conscience, would agree," Lawal said.

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Lawal's relationship with Tinubu has swung between flattery and open hostility for close to a decade. He backed Tinubu's presidential ambitions early, then broke with him in 2022 over the choice of Kashim Shettima, a fellow Muslim, as running mate, telling reporters at the time that a coalition was forming to defeat Tinubu over the same-faith ticket. He endorsed Labour Party candidate Peter Obi in the 2023 election. More recently, in June, he resigned from the African Democratic Congress after accusing that party's presidential primary of being rigged for Atiku Abubakar, and in the same period boasted on Channels Television that he could call Tinubu directly for money and receive it "before I get home."

That boast, made on June 8, drew a pointed response from Atiku's camp. Spokesman Paul Ibe referenced Lawal's tenure as SGF and the Senate committee that had investigated and recommended his prosecution over a forestry contract scandal that became known as the grass-cutting affair, a signal that Lawal's own record carries baggage that critics will use against him. A group calling itself the Northern Congress for Change made a similar argument last year, with convener Ben Amodu telling reporters in Abuja that Lawal's involvement in "the grass-cutting scandal" undercuts his standing to criticize the president.

No response yet from the two men named

Neither Tinubu's presidency nor Osinbajo has commented publicly on the funding claims. The Presidency has previously dismissed unrelated allegations against Tinubu's inner circle within days, as it did earlier this month when it rejected claims that Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila took money through a proxy tied to a scandal at the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council. Whether it moves as quickly this time is unclear.

Also unresolved is the identity of the American consultants Lawal referenced. He could not name them, and nothing in the public record from the 2015 campaign lists a foreign consulting firm tied to Obama-aligned operatives working for the APC. Any documentation, an invoice, a wire transfer, a contract, would settle a claim that currently rests on one man's recollection of a campaign that ended more than a decade ago. Until then, the N2 billion figure remains exactly what Lawal offered it as: a number from memory, unaccompanied by paper.