Reported by Ariajegbe Sylvia Esezobor
The All Progressives Congress on Thursday cautioned Nigerians against voting former Vice President Atiku Abubakar into power in the 2027 presidential election, warning that he must never again be allowed anywhere near the nation's treasury and describing his record in public office as an executive summary of some of Nigeria's vilest episodes of corruption and cronyism.
In a statement issued in Abuja by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, and titled "2027: Why Nigerians Must Keep Atiku Away From the National Treasury," the ruling party said the upcoming presidential election presented the electorate with the opportunity to deal a final blow to Atiku's desperate quest for presidential power and save the country from what it described as his ravenous plunder. "Ghosts of his sordid past continue, restlessly, to haunt and warn that Atiku must never again be allowed anywhere close to such a commanding position of trust and responsibility as the presidency," the statement read.
The APC described the African Democratic Congress presidential candidate as an accidental Vice President and categorically unfit for the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It said the media and public discourse had been awash with damning reports of Atiku's alleged dealings in local and international bribery and corruption schemes, adding that his record as a former public official was an executive summary of some of Nigeria's vilest episodes of corruption and cronyism that pulverised the economy and decimated public trust.
Detailing specific allegations spanning decades, the party cited the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project, the Siemens bribery scandal, the William Jefferson case, the Petroleum Technology Development Fund controversy and the 2010 report of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The APC said these were not mere allegations but matters well documented in official records, tribunal proceedings, government investigations, national and foreign legislative reports and international financial inquiries, which together raised legitimate questions about Atiku's fitness for probity and accountability as a serial presidential contender.
On the Mambilla project, the statement said an International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration Tribunal in Paris examined a five-hundred-thousand-dollar payment made in January 2003 by Leno Adesanya, promoter of Sunrise Power, to Jennifer Douglas, Atiku's wife at the time, through an offshore company. The payment, according to the APC, occurred around the period the Mambilla contract was awarded with Atiku as Vice President, and Atiku declined an opportunity to explain and justify what the party described as an illegal bribe payment to his wife. The APC also recalled the Siemens bribery scandal, in which United States authorities alleged that Siemens paid at least four-point-five million dollars in bribes to secure Nigerian telecommunications contracts during the Obasanjo administration, with about two-point-eight million dollars reportedly passing through a bank account owned by Douglas. Siemens subsequently agreed to pay approximately one-point-six billion dollars in penalties to United States and German authorities over global bribery violations.
Further citing the William Jefferson bribery case, the APC said United States court records indicated that former Congressman William Jefferson disclosed paying Atiku one hundred thousand dollars to influence a proposed business partnership involving iGate and Netlink Digital Television. Jefferson was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison. The party also referenced the 2010 report by the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which it said linked Atiku and Douglas to more than forty million dollars in suspicious funds transferred into the United States through offshore companies and lodged in over thirty bank accounts associated with Douglas and her family.
The APC further faulted Atiku's shift from his 2023 position favouring fuel subsidy removal to his new promise to restore the subsidy regime if elected, characterising the policy reversal as a calculated move to access and deplete the nation's growing financial reserves managed under the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. "Atiku's sudden u-turn from his 2023 policy position in favour of fuel subsidy removal to his new promise to restore the fuel subsidy regime, if elected, must be understood as his latest device to lay his hands on, and squander, the country's eighteen-year foreign reserve high of over fifty-four billion dollars built up from three billion dollars by President Bola Tinubu in less than four years through bold and prudent economic reforms," Morka said. The party argued that the choice before Nigerians in 2027 was between continuity of reform and a return to what it described as the era of corruption and economic mismanagement that Atiku represented.
Reinforcing its stance on Atiku's unsuitability for the nation's top office, the APC referenced critical remarks by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his book, My Watch, alongside Obasanjo's recent public statements reiterating regret over his choice of running mate in 1999. The party said Obasanjo's characterisation of Atiku as possessing a propensity for corruption and a tendency toward disloyalty reinforced its position that the former vice president could not be trusted with the presidency.
The statement comes amid an intensifying political confrontation between the ruling party and the opposition ahead of the 2027 general elections, scheduled for January 16, with the governorship and state assembly elections following on February 6. Atiku, who is seeking the presidency for the sixth time, has consistently dismissed the APC's allegations as recycled and politically motivated. In September, he said the ruling party had resorted to recycling decades-old allegations because it was unable to defend the hardship Nigerians were enduring. He accused the APC of distorting the findings of the ICC arbitration tribunal and presenting them to Nigerians as a corruption verdict when no such verdict was delivered. Atiku's campaign has positioned the cost of living, fuel prices and economic hardship at the centre of its message, arguing that the Tinubu administration's reforms have deepened poverty and inequality.
The APC's decision to frame the 2027 election as a referendum on Atiku's integrity reflects a broader strategy of defining the opposition by the character of its candidate rather than engaging on policy. By invoking a litany of corruption allegations and the authority of former President Obasanjo, the ruling party is seeking to disqualify Atiku in the eyes of voters before the campaign formally begins. Whether the strategy will succeed in a political environment where public discontent over economic conditions remains high is uncertain, but the APC has made clear that it intends to make Atiku's record the central issue of the contest. For now, the party's message to Nigerians is unambiguous: never again.
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