Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Tinubu spent his early life in southwestern Nigeria and later moved to the United States where he studied accounting at Chicago State University. He returned to Nigeria in the 1980s and was employed by Mobil Nigeria as an accountant, before entering politics as a Lagos West senatorial candidate in 1992 under the banner of the Social Democratic Party. After the military dictator Sani Abacha dissolved the Senate in 1993, Tinubu went into exile and became an activist campaigning for the return of democracy as a part of the National Democratic Coalition movement.

In the first post-transition Lagos State gubernatorial election, Tinubu won by a wide margin as a member of the Alliance for Democracy. Four years later, he won re-election to a second term. After leaving office in 2007, he played a key role in forming the All Progressives Congress in 2013. In 2023, he was elected president, defeating Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.

Tinubu was born in Lagos to a Muslim family from the Yoruba ethnic group, the son of Abibatu Mogaji, the Ìyál’ọ́jà of Lagos. He is generally accepted in reliable sources to have been born in 1952; this year of birth is sometimes disputed by political opponents, who argue that he is much older. Some reliable sources note that his age has not been verified.

Tinubu attended St. John’s Primary School, Aroloya, Lagos before proceeding to Children Home School in Ibadan.^[6] Tinubu arrived in the United States in 1975, where he commenced undergraduate studies first at Richard J. Daley College in Chicago and then at Chicago State University where he majored in accounting and management. He worked odd jobs as a dishwasher, night security guard and cab driver to support himself through college. He made the honor dean’s list as an undergraduate and taught remedial class tutorials, some of his classmates credited his lectures for their improved grades. Tinubu was the university accounting society president in his senior year. His cumulative GPA was 3.54. Tinubu graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 1979.