*Responds To Critics Of His Wealth Says He Is Building Africa’s First Auto Museum On 40 Hectares In Abuja
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Former Kogi State Senator, Dino Melaye, has said he is untroubled by criticism of his display of wealth, insisting that he is more concerned about what God thinks of him than about the opinions of people, and that he has never executed a government contract at federal or state level.
Melaye spoke in an interview with KAA Truths, in which he also addressed his car collection, his investments, the state of the National Assembly, the President’s directive to the EFCC over the Osun State accounts, government funding of religious pilgrimages, the collapse of the People’s Democratic Party, and his preference for Atiku Abubakar over Peter Obi.
Asked whether poor Nigerians judge wealthy people like him too harshly, the former lawmaker said the question did not detain him.
“I don’t actually care what people say about me, and I don’t give it any significance. I’m only worried about what God thinks about me. And once I’ve sorted that out, what man thinks is not important. I’ve never given it a thought, and I will not,” he said.
He said he does not read comments about himself online. “I don’t care whether anybody likes it or not. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t read comments, so I don’t feel perturbed, I don’t get disturbed. That won’t stop me from posting the next picture.”
He continued: “When somebody sitting in a low environment, possibly operating on N500 of data, decides to write anything on social media, why should that be of concern to me, when it won’t affect my next meal, won’t affect my next trip, won’t even affect my bank balance? He rather should be worried. But when I see good things, I appreciate them and pray to God: ‘God, I want to get this.'”
Of those who accuse him of insensitivity, he said they are “myopic” and “intellectually stagnant people who do not know me.”
Melaye defended the posting of his properties as an act of thanksgiving.
“What you see me do is a declaration of assets. What you see me do is appreciating my God,” he said.
He said he always accompanies such posts with an acknowledgement. “By the time you see me post anything about my house or my properties, I always follow it with a line acknowledging that this is not by my effort, not by my strength, it is only by the grace of the Almighty God, an unmerited favour given my background.”
He added: “I came from a very lowly background, but God, in his infinite mercy, out of his grace, out of divine favour, I am where I am today. And I should not be ashamed of it.”
He rejected the idea that wealth is itself insensitive. “It is not the design of God for you to be poor. God’s intention for you is to be successful,” he said, citing Philippians 4:19.
The former senator said his charitable work is deliberately unpublicised.
“My widow programme has been running for 27 years. I have an orphanage built by me, 100 beds, funded by me. I have a scholarship for hundreds of students, spanning over 20 years, and it’s ongoing,” he said.
He added: “But these are not issues for you to come to the public glare and make noise about. No, that’s just between you and your God, because it’s an injunction from the Almighty God for you to take care of the have-nots. So I don’t need to blow my trumpet.”
On the collection that prompted much of the criticism, Melaye said cars are his passion and that he began collecting in his early twenties.
“Every human being has got his passion. For some it’s diamonds, for some it’s luxury bags, for some shoes, for some watches. My very primary passion is cars,” he said. “Today, outside utility vehicles, in my collection, both the antique and modern, I have over 200, and I’m still collecting more.”
He said he is developing what he described as the first auto museum in Africa, on 40 hectares on Airport Road, Abuja, with his team having visited Ferrari World in Dubai and facilities in Monaco and Europe.
“We are building a car museum, the first of its kind in Africa. We are actually building a racetrack there, and we’re going to have 1,000 vehicles, each of them on spinners and each with their history by their side. So people can pay to go and watch. You can also pay to drive,” he said, adding that the project will include a Formula One standard track, a hotel of about 300 rooms, a golf course, a facility comparable to a theme park and a helipad. “It has been a dream of over 30 years.”
He confirmed that the swimming pool at his residence is suspended on the second floor.
Asked how he became wealthy, Melaye declined the description.
“I will not agree that I’m so wealthy. I will say I’m comfortable, to the glory of God. I will say I’m not satisfied, but I’m not hungry. I will say I’m contented,” he said.
He said the source of his money is verifiable by the absence of any investigation. “Legitimate wealth comes only from God Almighty. If my wealth is ill-gotten, if I had stolen government money, I would not be criticising government, because they would have long come after me. I’ve never been invited by the EFCC or ICPC or any of the anti-corruption agencies in this country, because I’ve never done government contracts, whether at federal or state level.”
He said he has been out of public office since 2019 without a fall in his standard of living. “Seven years ago. My standard has not dropped. Definitely, there’s a second address.”
Melaye traced his investing to childhood.
“At the age of 12, I bought a goat, and this goat would give birth, and I would sell the offspring of the goat to pay my school fees in secondary school. From the offspring of that goat, I paid for my first year and second year at Ahmadu Bello University,” he said.
He said he began investing internationally at 18 and bought euro bonds 27 years ago, when the currency exchanged at about N60, rolling the proceeds over since. He said he holds shares acquired in Apple, Microsoft, Uber and Zoom, and that his friends laughed at the Uber and Zoom purchases before both appreciated. He also said he entered franchise businesses in the United States more than 20 years ago.
On property, he said he began in Dubai by buying studios and letting them on Airbnb, progressing to one- and two-bedroom units and then to a duplex in a tower on one of the city’s most expensive streets. “Today I’m not just having a portfolio of apartments in Dubai. I am a developer,” he said, adding that his portfolio spans Qatar, Oman, Dubai, the United States and Sweden.
He offered a distinction he said young people should grasp. “The difference between richness and wealth is that when you are rich, you are working for money. You go to work from nine to five. But when you are wealthy, money works for you.”
He added: “Every Nigerian must decide to either walk in the light of creative altruism or perish in the darkness of destructive selfishness,” and, on planning: “You must picture a future you want to feature in. Failure to plan is planning to fail.”
Asked whether politics or private business builds and sustains wealth faster, Melaye’s answer was categorical.
“Anyone who is making money from politics is an evil person, because politics is not supposed to be a business. Politics is supposed to be a means that will lead to the development of a country,” he said.
“It is because people have made politics business that you have more churches than industries in this country. It is because people have made politics business that individuals are stronger than institutions, and that is why our institutions are not strengthened.”
He said the consequence is visible when politicians leave office. “Most of the politicians in this country, 90 per cent, do not have a second address. That’s why once they leave as governor, eight years after, they are broke. You leave as senator, four years after, you cannot afford to pay your children’s school fees. You leave as member of House of Reps, three years after, you are selling all your properties.”
He recalled two bills he moved in the Senate that failed to attract a seconder: one to make legislative office part-time and paid by sitting, and another to replace the bicameral legislature with a single chamber. “The same thing House of Reps is doing is what Senate is doing. At the end of the day you are paying 360 people here, you are paying 109 people here, doing the same thing. All that is wastage.”
Melaye pointed to the President’s directive to the EFCC over the frozen Osun State Government accounts as the clearest illustration of institutional weakness.
“The president just yesterday, with bravado, said he has called the EFCC chairman to restore the accounts of a state government. That’s a typical example of an individual stronger than an institution,” he said.
“The EFCC is an independent institution of government that the president should have no control over,” he continued. “A spokesperson of the president will come out and say, yes, the president spoke with Adeleke and he has instructed, he has ordered the EFCC. The president has no power over public institutions.”
He said the Commission should act “according to the extant laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not according to the dictates of Mr President.”
He argued that the office itself is over-endowed. “The President of Nigeria, in terms of power, is the most powerful president in the world. He decides who will be INEC chairman. He decides who gets an oil block. He decides who will be IG of police. He decides who will be Central Bank governor. He decides who will be chief of army staff, chief of naval staff. There’s no president in the world that has such powers.”
He contrasted that with the United States. “No matter how Trump is the most powerful American president that ever existed, he has lost cases in the Supreme Court of the United States because the institutions are stronger than him. But that is not possible in Nigeria.”
His prescription was constitutional. “There’s a need for a complete overhauling of the constitution. We need to reboot Nigeria. When a computer is freezing, you reboot. And after rebooting, you need to go back to the foundation problems of this country. This presidential system of government we borrowed from America cannot help us.”
Melaye said the National Assembly has ceased to be independent.
“Any legislature whose leadership is decided by the presidency will be a rubber stamp assembly,” he said. “The reason why the 8th Senate will continue to reckon in the history of this country is because it was not the Villa that produced the leadership. Saraki and Ekweremadu were a creation of the members of the National Assembly, not the Villa. That’s why ministerial nominees were rejected, that’s why ambassadorial nominees were rejected, and the president sent fresh names. Is that possible under this government? It’s not.”
He added: “A rubber stamp would be more valuable. The National Assembly is a department or a parastatal of the Villa.”
He also argued that the relationship between government and citizen has inverted. “Naturally, government is supposed to be afraid of the people. But in this government it is the other way round: the people are afraid of government.”
Melaye said religion has displaced production in the national economy, recalling a building he saw in Ibadan.
“There’s a six-storey building I saw and I counted about 40 churches on one building. Some of the names sounded like a company name,” he said. “There’s no society where you have more churches or more mosques than industries that you will survive.”
He objected to state funding of pilgrimages. “All the successful countries in the world don’t fund religious bodies. Every year the federal government spends billions to send people to Jerusalem and to Mecca. Religion is individualistic. On judgment day, nobody will stand between you and God.”
He continued: “There’s no hadith in the Quran, there’s no chapter of the Bible that says if you did not go to Mecca or on pilgrimage to Israel you will not make heaven. Then why will government be spending billions of naira that is supposed to be meant for development? Our roads, you know their state. Our hospitals, you know their state.”
He cited the United Nations by way of comparison. “I’ve gone to many United Nations sessions, including the General Assembly. There’s no opening prayer, there’s no closing prayer, and they are successful.”
Told that religious critics would attack him for the remarks, he said: “I will laugh at them, because they are ignorant.”
He also criticised what he called nepotism in appointments. “Giving a carpentry job to a tailor, you will not survive,” he said, citing the appointment of a lawyer to the ministries of power, works and housing, a veterinary doctor as minister of health, and a former governor with no security background as a defence minister. “You must put square pegs in square holes.”
Asked about the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, who recently said the President should not be blamed for hardship and insecurity, Melaye was dismissive.
“Maybe he’s doing Yoruba, maybe he’s doing partiality. But if it’s the same market that we go to that they go to, if it’s the same petrol station, if it’s the same environment we live in, where people are being kidnapped on a daily basis, children are being killed in the wilderness, a five-year-old child murdered in cold blood in the wilderness — no minister of God will speak like that.”
He said the security situation is unprecedented. “Insecurity, we have never seen it in this magnitude. People cannot go to their farms. People cannot go to school. Even in times of war, conventionally, globally, children and women are exempted. In Nigeria, women have been kidnapped, children are being kidnapped, pregnant women murdered.”
He said clerics will answer for their words. “God will ask every minister of God, every imam, every mallam, on judgment day, how you misled the people, how you misinformed the people, how you became biased. Ministers of God are supposed to be change agents. In the Old Testament, prophets walked up to kings and told them the truth. Elijah did it, Elisha did it, Daniel did it. Today our ministers of God are romancing governments.”
Asked about figures who once criticised the government and now defend it, Melaye said he would not join them.
“Both of them are eating from the king’s table. But I will not eat on the king’s table. I will not defile my life for the food of the king,” he said, citing the biblical account of Daniel.
He added: “God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity, but the spirit of boldness and of a sound mind. I have conquered fear. There’s no man to be feared. If you speak the truth, you will die. If you lie, you die. So I have chosen to speak the truth and die, because the truth has no volume. If you increase it, it’s no longer the truth. If you reduce it, it’s no longer the truth.”
Of two named commentators who have shifted position, he said only: “They refused to be a Joseph, who refused to sleep with Potiphar’s wife. I’m praying for them.”
Melaye criticised the President’s recent remark that all is fair in politics and war.
“A president’s statements are quotes for life,” he said. “A father who had the Quran on his left hand and the constitution on his right hand on May 29 and swore to defend it, opened his mouth and said in politics and war all is fair. Rigging is fair? Ballot snatching is fair? Killing, violence is fair? From the president of a nation.”
He linked it to an earlier remark. “This same Tinubu in 2022 said grab it and run away with it. So what history are we leaving for generations yet unborn?”
On the claim of entitlement to office, he said: “Is democracy a monarchy? Is it a traditional stool? Is it an honorary chieftaincy title? It’s a contest. But when a man says it is my turn, that is not democracy. Democracy will continue to be government of the people, by the people and for the people. What Tinubu is introducing is greedocracy — government of the greedy, by the greedy and for the greedy.”
He declined to comment on a matter involving a debt recovery agency, saying: “Both the hunter and the hunted are guilty, and because I’m a lawyer and the matter is before a court of law, it is prejudicial for me to speak on it.”
Asked about his 2023 declaration on Arise Television that the People’s Democratic Party was dead and could not rise again, Melaye said events had borne him out.
“PDP is dead because it was sold,” he said, naming the party’s then interim chairman, national secretary and national organising secretary. “These three people sold it to Tinubu and APC. So PDP was procured before we could organise the funeral.”
He said the courts have confirmed the position. “Even the Supreme Court of Nigeria has pronounced it dead, because it refused to uphold the Ibadan convention, refused to uphold the Abuja convention, and refused to recognise any of its leadership. So that’s a dead body.”
Asked whether his own departure to the APC with others contributed to the party’s collapse, he answered with an analogy. “When you enter a vehicle and you find out there’s a bomb in the car, and the bomb is saying 50 minutes, and you have the opportunity to run out of that vehicle before the explosion would you run? That’s what we did. We were in a car that was carrying explosives.”
Asked why he considers Atiku Abubakar rather than Peter Obi the right person to succeed the President, Melaye drew a distinction he acknowledged would offend.
“Atiku is a nationalist. Obi is a regional champion. It may sound awkward, it may sound offensive. Obi is a good man. He’s my friend. I have respect for him. But he’s a regional champion. And no regional champion in this country will ever be president.”
He said the same of earlier figures. “Azikiwe, another educated Nigerian, well behaved, well mannered, but a regional champion. All the times he ran for the presidency, he could only win in the South East. Aminu Kano — pious man, incorruptible, friend of the talakawas — but a regional champion. Muhammadu Buhari ran for the presidency three times as a regional champion and lost, winning 12 million votes in the North that no president after him has even got. Until there was a coalition where everybody came together, and he now ran on a national platform.”
He said Shehu Shagari prevailed in 1979 for the same reason: a presidential candidate from the North, a vice presidential candidate from the East and a national chairman from the South West.
Pressed that the three leading candidates each won 12 states in 2023, and that Obi carried Lagos, Abuja and Plateau, Melaye insisted the test is different. “When we say national and regional, it’s not primarily about where your votes are coming from. It’s about where you have structures. Where is Obi’s structure in Katsina? Where is his structure in Borno? Where is his structure in Ekiti? There is no state in this country where Atiku does not have a structure, having been vice president.”
Asked whether he would have supported Obi had he won the ADC primary, he said: “One hundred per cent. What we would have done is appeal to Atiku to loan his structure to him. That’s how politics works.” He added that Atiku had said publicly he would support whoever won the primary, before alleging that “Peter prefers an air-conditioned kitchen. He doesn’t want a primary, he just wants to be coronated.”
Asked why the FCT Minister appears untouchable, Melaye said the answer lies in appetite for power.
“This country, may God have mercy on us. Insatiable quests for materialism and for power can push people to do anything,” he said. “I’m not one of those politicians who will do anything just to be in power. Wike is somebody who will do anything to be in power, and Tinubu has seen that convenience and has exploited it. As I’m speaking to you, he is being used by Tinubu. He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. But God is a God of time and season.”
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