Despite telling Nigerians that her family did not need Nigeria’s wealth in 2023, Oluremi Tinubu, Nigeria’s first lady, received N700 million from the state house to purchase dollars for foreign trips between November and March.

The state house has spent N700,707,534 to purchase foreign currencies for the first lady’s trips to London, Mozambique, Addis Ababa, France and the United States between November 2023 and March 2024, FIJ has found.

FIJ found the transaction details on GovSpend, a website that mirrors the Open Treasury Portal.

For each of those trips, the state house spent no less than N70 million on the purchase of foreign exchange for the first lady, while the highest amount paid was a little over N200 million.

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In November 2023, N77,659,888.63 was spent to purchase foreign currency for the first lady’s trip to the US while N149,794,284.71 was spent for her trip to France.

In March, the state house spent N473,253,061.21 on foreign exchange for the first lady’s trips to Mozambique, Addis Ababa and London.

More details are contained in the table below:

‘WE DON’T NEED NIGERIA’S WEALTH ‘ — OLUREMI TINUBU

While speaking at an event before President Bola Tinubu’s inauguration in 2023, Oluremi Tinubu told Nigerians that her family was blessed and they did not need Nigeria’s wealth. Since making this claim, several reports about Tinubu’s extravagant spending of public funds have been published.

Despite not being recognised by the Nigerian constitution, the ‘Office of the First Lady’ has enjoyed allocations of billions and expended millions since Tinubu became president.

For instance, FIJ reported that the presidency had allocated N1.5 billion to purchase official vehicles for the first lady’s office in the 2023 supplementary budget. At the same time, N5.095 billion was allocated to purchase the presidential yacht.

Nigerians berated the president for these allocations at a time when the economy is in abysmal form and millions of Nigerians were stuck in multidimensional poverty.

The presidency assured Nigerians that the allocation for the presidential yacht would be disbursed into a new educational loan fund, but even this turned out to be untrue. FIJ recently revealed that the same amount remained in the budget under a different name.

Another report also showed that the state house spent N250 million for ‘first lady programmes’. Some of those funds went into hall decorations and fresh flowers.

A RECENT PRECEDENT

Extravagant spending on foreign trips as the First Lady is not exclusive to Tinubu.

While Aisha Buhari was Nigera’s first lady, she made a memorable precedent for her successors by embarking on trips to Dubai, the US and other international destinations.

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In 2022, social media went agog with a video of first ladies of different Nigerian states visiting Buhari in Dubai bearing gifts during her birthday celebration.

They received criticisms from Nigerians for spending public funds on private trips. This led the first ladies to release a defensive press statement.

The first ladies stated that they only travelled to Dubai on an official trip. They claimed that the trip coincided with Buhari’s birthday.