Atiku Breaks Silence: “No Court Anywhere Has Found Me Guilty of Corruption”

Former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, has dismissed allegations of corruption against him by the Presidency.

Naija News recalls that presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, had accused Atiku of corruption while serving as Vice-President and argued that the ADC chieftain would have been jailed if he were a Chinese citizen.

Reacting in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku argued that the Presidency’s decision to invoke China’s legal system in defending President Bola Tinubu has only drawn renewed attention to allegations surrounding the President’s past.

He described the Presidency’s reference to China as a “monumental own goal,” arguing that the country’s tough laws on serious drug offences and stringent anti-corruption regime had turned the administration’s argument against it.

Shaibu said the Presidency had made a strategic error by invoking China, arguing that the country’s harsh penalties for serious narcotics offences could only intensify questions surrounding allegations linked to President Tinubu’s past.

“It takes a peculiar kind of unintelligence for a spokesman to set out to drag an opponent before a hypothetical Chinese court, only to end up dragging his own principal into the dock.

“Perhaps, the spokesman did not realise that the maximum penalty under Chinese law for the most serious drug trafficking offences is death. Having chosen China as his benchmark, he unwittingly invited Nigerians to examine the very standard he thought would embarrass Atiku Abubakar,” Shaibu said.

Atiku maintained that he had never been indicted or convicted of corruption, narcotics offences or any other criminal offence in Nigeria or abroad.

The facts are neither complicated nor disputable. Atiku Abubakar has never been indicted or convicted by any court in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world for corruption, narcotics offences or, indeed, any criminal offence whatsoever. That is an incontrovertible matter of public record,” the statement said.

The former Vice-President’s camp also questioned how Chinese authorities would have handled the issue of $460,000 forfeited to the United States Government in a civil forfeiture proceeding concerning funds alleged to be connected to narcotics trafficking and money laundering.

Shaibu argued that China’s tough approach to narcotics-related offences and public accountability made it an unsuitable benchmark for the Presidency to invoke casually.

“China is renowned for its uncompromising approach to narcotics-related offences and public accountability. It is not a jurisdiction where the forfeiture of suspicious proceeds ordinarily marks the end of official scrutiny. More often than not, that is where scrutiny begins,” he said.

The former Vice-President also rejected the Presidency’s reliance on a recent response from the United States Government to Nigeria’s diplomatic correspondence as evidence that Tinubu had been exonerated from past allegations.

According to him, diplomatic exchanges between sovereign governments could not be equated with a judicial pronouncement.

“The Presidency should also stop brandishing the United States Government’s reply to its diplomatic correspondence as though it were a judicial acquittal. Diplomatic correspondence between sovereign governments is routine. It is neither a judgment of a court, nor a declaration of innocence, nor an instrument for rewriting history,” he said.

He urged the Tinubu administration to focus on the economic hardship, insecurity and other challenges confronting Nigerians rather than engage in political exchanges with opposition figures.

“The Tinubu administration would do better to devote its dwindling political capital to confronting the economic hardship, rising hunger, insecurity and institutional decline afflicting Nigerians instead of manufacturing diversions that collapse at the slightest contact with the facts,” Atiku said.