Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has described the renewed recycling of decades-old allegations against him as the convulsion of political opponents cornered by their own failures, unable to defend the hardship Nigerians are enduring and now desperately searching for an Atiku controversy because they cannot survive scrutiny of their own economic record. In a statement issued […]
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has described the renewed recycling of decades-old allegations against him as the convulsion of political opponents cornered by their own failures, unable to defend the hardship Nigerians are enduring and now desperately searching for an Atiku controversy because they cannot survive scrutiny of their own economic record.
In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said the sudden return to allegations rooted in the political battles of the Obasanjo era was not a demonstration of strength but an admission that his opponents have run out of answers to hunger, collapsing purchasing power and the unbearable cost of living.
“At some point, desperation announces itself. When those defending this government can no longer explain why food, transportation, electricity, rent, education,insecurity and healthcare are increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary families, they rummage through twenty-year-old files looking for an escape route. This is panic dressed up as accountability.
“Let us not rewrite history. The Obasanjo administration did not protect me. At the height of our political disagreement, these matters travelled through the EFCC, an administrative panel, the National Assembly and the courts. The machinery of the state was fully deployed and the political hostility was public. Yet no court convicted me on these allegations. That is the record.
“So what exactly has been discovered in 2026 that Nigeria did not hear twenty years ago? A petition is not a conviction, an acknowledgement stamp is not evidence of guilt, and repetition cannot magically become a judgment of court. Anyone with credible evidence against me should bring it out and test it before the law. I have issued that challenge before, and I repeat it today without hesitation.
“The contrast with Bola Tinubu is almost comic. While I am saying, ‘bring out your evidence,’ Tinubu actually went to an American court to intervene in a case seeking FBI and DEA records concerning him, citing privacy interests in records he argued should not be disclosed. It is like a man ordering his neighbour to empty his pockets while keeping his own firmly zipped. A man seeking protection for his own records has no business waving petitions at somebody else. My challenge is simple: let every lawful record be opened and every allegation tested. Let Nigerians see who welcomes scrutiny and who reaches for privacy arguments when the files concern him.
“But none of this political theatre will answer the question Nigerians are asking: why does their money buy less food, why does transportation swallow more of their wages, why are businesses struggling, and why are families working harder but living worse?
“The EFCC belongs to Nigeria, not to any government, party or candidate. It should investigate genuine wrongdoing wherever it finds it, but state institutions must never become emergency political weapons activated whenever those in power are losing the argument on governance.
“You cannot feed a hungry family with an EFCC petition. You cannot restore purchasing power with recycled allegations, and you cannot make life affordable by shouting Atiku whenever Nigerians demand answers.
“The old script did not stop me then, and it will not stop me now. In 2027, Nigerians will judge us by our records, the lives they are living and the future we offer them. Those afraid of that judgment may continue rummaging through the archives. We are facing the Nigerian people.”
