The Office of the Vice President of Nigeria paid the sum of N10 million to offset hotel bills incurred by guests of Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, President Bola Tinubu’s daughter, FIJ has learned.
On November 17, 2023, the vice president’s office paid the sum to Royal Pacific Group, and the payment description states, “Payment in favour of Fraser Suites, Abuja, Nigeria, for the settlement of hotel accommodation bills for the service rendered to guests of Mrs Folashade Tinubu-Ojo”.
FIJ found records of this transaction on the BudgIT Govspend platform as scraped from the publicly available Open Treasury Portal.
Folashade is the leader of Nigerian traders. Popularly referred to as Iyaloja-General of Nigeria, she occupies no elected office in government, even though in May 2023 she began referring to herself as the first daughter of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
FIJ found records dating back to June 11, 2019, of regular payments made by several MDAs to Royal Pacific Group for accommodation purposes of guests, but this was the first payment to the company for guests of a private citizen.
FIJ tried to contact Ibrahim Hadejia, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President in the Office of the Vice President, but we were unable to obtain his contact information.
On Monday, FIJ called Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to the President, but he wasn’t reachable. A text message sent to him had not been responded to at press time.