Happy Birthday to an example of a technocrat as political hero. From all of us at COSGABAT.

Celebration of a visionary and strategic leader by the COALITION OF SUPPORT GROUPS FOR ASIWAJU BOLA AHMED TINUBU (COSGABAT)

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Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu (born 29 March 1952) is a Nigerian politician and a national leader of the All Progressives Congress. He was Lagos State Governor from 1999 to 2007.

Early life
Tinubu was born on 29 March 1952 in Osun State, Nigeria. His mother, Abibatu Mogaji, was a trader that later became the Iyaloja of Lagos.

Education
He attended St. John’s Primary School, Aroloya, Lagos and Children’s Home School in Ibadan, South West of Nigeria. Tinubu then went to the United States in 1975, where he studied first at Richard J. Daley College in Chicago, Illinois, and then at Chicago State University. He graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting.

Early career
Tinubu worked for the American companies Arthur Andersen, Deloitte, Haskins, & Sells, and GTE Services Corporation.[3] After returning to Nigeria in 1983, Bola Tinubu joined Mobil Oil Nigeria, and later became an executive of the company.

Governor of Lagos State
When he assumed office in May 1999, Tinubu promised 10,000 housing units for the poor with little achieved. During the eight-year period of his being in office, he made large investments in education in the state and also reduced the number of schools in the state by returning many schools to the already settled former owners. He also initiated new road construction, required to meet the needs of the fast-growing population of the state.

Tinubu, alongside a new deputy governor, Femi Pedro, won re-election into office as governor in April 2003. All other states in the South West fell to the People’s Democratic Party in those elections. He was involved in a struggle with the Olusegun Obasanjo-controlled federal government over whether Lagos State had the right to create new Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) to meet the needs of its large population. The controversy led to the federal government seizing funds meant for local councils in the state. During the latter part of his term in office, he was engaged in continuous clashes with PDP powers such as Adeseye Ogunlewe, a former Lagos State senator who had become minister of works, and Bode George, the southwest chairman of the PDP.

Relations between Tinubu and deputy governor Femi Pedro became increasingly tense after Pedro declared his intention to run for the gubernatorial elections. Pedro competed to become the AC candidate for governor in the 2007 elections, but withdrew his name on the eve of the party nomination. He defected to the Labour Party while still keeping his position as deputy governor. Tinubu’s tenure as Lagos State Governor ended on 29 May 2007, when his successor Babatunde Fashola of the Action Congress took office.

Personal life
He is a Muslim. Tinubu is married to Oluremi Tinubu, the current Senator of the Lagos Central Senatorial District. His nephew, Adewale Tinubu is the CEO of Oando Plc. His mother, Chief Abibatu Mogaji, died on the 15th of June 2014, at the age of 96. On the 31st of October 2017, his son Jide Tinubu had a heart attack while in London and was later confirmed dead.