Your Criticisms of Our Party’s Presidential Campaign Council, Can’t Wipe Away Tinubu’s Under Performance, ADC Tells APC

*Dele Momodu: Why Atiku named El-Rufai in ADC campaign council

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) Presidential Campaign Council has rebuked the All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesman, Felix Morka’s latest attack on former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on the recently named members of the party’s presidential campaign council as a grubby attempt to conduct a trial by insult.

This was a chieftain of the ADC, Dele Momodu, explained the decision by the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku, to appoint former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, as Deputy Chairman of his 2027 Presidential Campaign Council.

Morka had piled attacks on the constitution of the ADC presidential campaign Council, deducting it as “dead on arrival of political dead woods”.

But in a statement issued by its Director of Strategic Communications, Phrank Shaibu, the Council said Morka’s insults could not answer Nigerians asking why food, fuel, transport and electricity have become so difficult to afford.

“Morka has become an untutored spin doctor for a party caught in the conundrum of a sinking regime,” Shaibu said. “Strip away the gutter language and his argument is simple: an allegation against Atiku must be treated as a conviction.”

The Council said Morka’s warning that Atiku must be kept away from the national treasury was a remarkable sermon from the party of a president whose accounts were the subject of a United States’ forfeiture case arising from narcotics trafficking allegations, which the proceedings ended with the forfeiture of $460,000 from an account in Tinubu’s name.

“Tinubu court record reads at times like the script of a 1970s gangster film: an alleged heroin network, aliases, wire transfers, accounts spread across banks and relatives whose names recur in the financial trail. Yet this is no work of fiction. It is a sworn affidavit filed in a United States federal court,” Shaibu said.

“The connections described by the investigator were specific. Adegboyega Mueez Akande introduced Tinubu to First Heritage Bank. Shortly after Tinubu opened an account there, $80,000 arrived through a transfer linked to Akande. Tinubu subsequently purchased a $5,000 cashier’s cheque payable to Akande’s wife, Audrey; the cheque was deposited into Akande’s account. Corporate documents supplied for Compass Finance, whose accounts Tinubu controlled, listed Akande and Abiodun Agbele as directors.

“A bank introduction. A transfer. A cheque. A company. Tinubu should explain those transactions and why the same names kept appearing around his finances.”

Shaibu said the affidavit also allegedly placed Oluremi Tinubu in the banking records. It stated that she held a joint checking account with her husband and had previously held another joint account at the same bank with Audrey Akande, the wife of the major narcotics suspect, Adegboyega Mueez Akande.

“The affidavit documents Oluremi Tinubu and her husband Bola as associates of the narcotics gang,” Shaibu said. “So, the President cannot dismiss a documented financial trail by pretending Nigerians have no right to ask where it led.”

The Council said a US federal court ruled in 2025 that the Department of Justice had officially acknowledged Tinubu as a subject of a criminal investigation involving the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

It also alleged that another report said an FBI search for “Bola” and “Tinubu” appeared in a file involving multiple subjects.

The Council said the President should support the fullest lawful disclosure of the relevant records and explain what they contain.

“Morka’s colleagues will rush to tell Nigerians that a search result is not a conviction. Nobody has said it is,” Shaibu said. “But that observation does not erase the court’s finding that Tinubu was a subject of an investigation. Nigerians deserve to know what the records say, what role he played in the events they describe, and why disclosure has been resisted.”

Shaibu said the Presidency’s description of the current US litigation as a civil dispute over access to records did not answer the historical question.

“Yes, the case before the court concerns access to records. The records concern an investigation. Both facts can be true at once. A press statement from Abuja cannot erase a finding in a Washington courtroom,” he said.

The Council recalled that Tinubu also appeared before Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Tribunal in 2011 over allegations that he operated foreign bank accounts while serving as Lagos State governor. The charges were struck out after the tribunal found that the Code of Conduct Bureau had not followed the required procedure. Tinubu was not convicted, and the Council said the APC was entitled to describe that outcome accurately.

“It must show the same respect for the record when Atiku’s name is involved,” Shaibu said.

The Council also challenged the APC to explain inconsistencies in Tinubu’s educational records. His 1999 electoral papers listed Government College, Ibadan, and the University of Chicago among the schools he attended. Before a Lagos State House of Assembly committee, Tinubu accepted responsibility for incorrect entries but said an aide had supplied the information. The committee found incorrect statements about his education, though it found no evidence that he submitted a forged document to INEC.

“The APC cannot lecture Nigerians about integrity while refusing to explain a glaring discrepancy in the educational records associated with President Tinubu. A college application record names Government College Lagos as the school from which he graduated in 1970. The school’s own old boys’ association says it was founded in 1974. How does anyone graduate from a school four years before it opens?

“That discrepancy deserves a clear answer. The APC’s spokesmen can bring the records, explain the dates and let Nigerians judge. Until then, every sermon they deliver on Atiku’s character will sound like an invitation to examine the record they are so anxious to defend.”

The Council noted the difference between Tinubu’s stated 1952 birth year and 1954 on a Chicago academic transcript, as well as the dispute over the diploma he submitted to INEC in 2023. “Chicago State University confirmed that a Bola Tinubu attended and graduated in 1979; its registrar said the university could not authenticate the particular diploma submitted to INEC because it did not possess that document.

“Tinubu has been a senator, a governor and now President. Nigerians should not have to piece together his public record from electoral forms, legislative inquiries and documents obtained through litigation abroad,” Shaibu said.

Turning to the Mambilla arbitration, the Council said Morka had again confused a question raised by a tribunal with a finding it never made. “The tribunal questioned Leno Adesanya’s explanation for a $500,000 payment to Jennifer Douglas. It did not find that Atiku received a bribe or used his office to secure the disputed Mambilla contract for Sunrise. Besides, the tribunal held that there was actually no contract. So, the purported bribe was to what end?

“Adesanya’s explanation about the said payment may have called for further probe by the tribunal, but it does not give Morka permission to write a corruption verdict the tribunal never delivered,” Shaibu said.

The Council said the same distinction applied to the 2010 United States Senate report. “The report examined transfers involving Atiku and Douglas, but did not adjudicate Atiku’s criminal guilt. It discussed Siemens payments to an account held by Douglas without establishing that Atiku received them. It stated that no evidence was introduced at William Jefferson’s trial showing Atiku sought or accepted a bribe from him. It recorded a Nigerian Senate committee’s recommendation for sanctions over PTDF, but found no evidence that the Senate imposed them.

“Morka may raise each matter. He may not strip away the report’s distinctions and present the resulting fiction as a judgement against Atiku. If he claims there is a conviction, let him identify the court and publish the judgement,” Shaibu said.

The Council said Morka’s claim that Tinubu raised Nigeria’s foreign reserves from $3 billion to more than $54 billion deserved an award for creative accounting. “The Central Bank of Nigeria reported $34.39 billion at the end of May 2023.

“Morka simply deleted more than $31 billion from what Tinubu inherited, then invited Nigerians to applaud the ‘miracle’ that followed,” Shaibu said. “The missing money did not disappear from Nigeria’s reserves. It disappeared inside an APC press statement. Before Morka lectures anyone about the national treasury, he should learn to read the Central Bank’s figures.”

Shaibu said foreign reserves were national assets, not Tinubu’s private savings account. “Atiku’s proposed fuel subsidy would be transparent, budgeted and tied to petroleum products refined in Nigeria and sold to Nigerians. The APC could debate its cost and design,” he said, “but calling a proposal for cheaper fuel a plan to loot reserves evaded the hardship facing families.”

The Council said the APC’s attack also invited Nigerians to compare records of leadership. “During Atiku’s first term as vice president, the administration introduced Universal Basic Education. Atiku chaired the National Council on Privatisation and held responsibility for a major part of its economic reform programme. Those were the responsibilities he held within an administration whose work Nigerians can assess.

“Tinubu has governed for more than three years. Nigerians can assess his leadership every time they buy food, pay for transport or settle an electricity bill. Morka can recite inflated reserve claims and attack Atiku all day. Neither exercise reduces those costs,” Shaibu said.

“We sympathise with Morka’s predicament,” Shaibu said. “Defending a government that has made daily life painfully expensive cannot be an easy assignment. But Nigerians will not forget what they pay at the market and the petrol station simply because an APC spokesman has found another insult for Atiku.”

The Council said Atiku would answer serious questions with facts and challenged Tinubu and the APC to do the same.

“Let the relevant FBI records be released, with lawful protections for confidential sources and other individuals. Let Tinubu answer the questions their contents raise. A President who asks Nigerians to trust him with another term for the nation’s highest office should trust them with the truth about his own record,” Shaibu said.

Defending Atiku’s appointment of the former Kaduna State governor, el-Rufai, as Deputy Chairman of his 2027 Presidential Campaign Council, Momodu said the appointment was partly intended to honour what he described as el-Rufai’s sacrifices, while also recognising the former governor’s political influence and relevance to the opposition party’s campaign ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Momodu, who serves as Deputy Director General of the campaign’s Media and Communications Directorate, spoke on Channels Television yesterday.

Atiku had on Thursday unveiled the campaign structure, appointing Kashim Ibrahim-Imam as Chairman of the National Campaign Council, el-Rufai as Deputy Chairman and Senator Austin Akobundu as Director General and Campaign Manager.

Explaining el-Rufai’s inclusion, Momodu said the appointment was a recognition of the former governor’s political experience and what he characterised as the sacrifices he had made.

“It is a way of honouring his sacrifice because his travails, I can say, are quite political in nature.”

Momodu also pointed to el-Rufai’s decision to return to Nigeria despite the possibility of arrest, saying it demonstrated his commitment to the country.

“He’s being held down not because he has committed any crime. He could have stayed away from the country. He chose to come back to the country. He knew he was going to be arrested, and he was arrested,” Momodu said.

El-Rufai is involved in ongoing legal proceedings and has denied wrongdoing. Momodu criticised the bail conditions attached to the former governor’s case, describing them as excessive.

“The bail conditions given to him are so horrendous that even his enemies would wonder why he has to go through such a painful experience in the hands of a government that he helped to midwife,” he said.

Momodu further highlighted el-Rufai’s political influence, particularly his role in the political developments preceding the 2023 presidential election.

“If not for him, I’m sure President Bola Tinubu would not be in office today,” Momodu said.

The ADC chieftain described el-Rufai as an influential political figure whose experience could be brought to bear on the campaign’s political coordination and engagement with stakeholders across the country.