Billionaire businessman denies governorship rumours

Billionaire businessman Femi Otedola has denied nursing plans to run for the office of Governor of Lagos State.

The rumours assumed lives of their own after Otedola opened a Twitter account and hopped on a Molue bus in suburban Lagos—all in the space of three months.

Video footage of Otedola in a Molue immediately went viral, fueling speculations that it was a carefully orchestrated populist stunt from the billionaire ahead of the 2019 electioneering season.

Fake Twitter accounts have also been opened in Otedola's name. It was from one of those cloned and parody accounts that it was announced he will be running for political office.

But Otedola has come out to pour cold water on the rumour mill.

“My attention has been drawn to a news piece where false information from a parody account was posted. I am a man of the people and I will always be on the side of the masses but I am stating clearly via this medium that I am not running for office”, he tweeted.

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“The Governor of Lagos State is doing a commendable job and Lagosians should be proud of him”.

Otedola endorses Ambode

In March, Otedola endorsedserving Lagos Governor Akinwunmi Ambode for a second term in office.

“He is building roads and bridges, schools and hospitals, water treatment plants, sewage and storm water drainages, solid waste management plants and mass transport infrastructure”, Otedola said of Ambode at the time.

“He recently got approval for the electricity power infrastructure for Lagos, which when fully executed, will make Lagos State almost energy independent in Nigeria.

“You are all aware of the newly-acquired mass transit buses that are going to be natural gas powered in order for us in Lagos to be the first to comply with the global climate agenda of de-carbonisation,” Otedola had added.

Like the rest of the country, Lagos which is Nigeria’s wealthiest State and commercial capital, will hold fresh elections to choose a Governor and a slew of lawmakers in 2019.