Reported by Ariajegbe Sylvia Esezobor
The African Democratic Congress Presidential Campaign Council has challenged the All Progressives Congress to produce a court judgment convicting former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of corruption, accusing the ruling party's National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, of conducting a trial by insult and presenting allegations as established verdicts.
In a statement issued on Friday by the Council's Director of Strategic Communications, Phrank Shaibu, the ADC said Morka had become "an untutored spin doctor for a party caught in the conundrum of a sinking regime." Shaibu said that when the "gutter language" was stripped away, Morka's argument amounted to a simple and untenable proposition: that an allegation against Atiku must be treated as a conviction. "Morka may shout like a prosecutor and posture like a judge, but he cannot manufacture a conviction," Shaibu said. "If he has a judgment against Atiku, let him produce it. If he does not, he should stop parading his allegations as the verdict of a court." The Council said the APC spokesman's insults could not answer Nigerians asking why food, fuel, transport and electricity had become so difficult to afford.
The ADC's intervention follows a statement by Morka on Thursday in which he urged Nigerians to scrutinise Atiku's record in public office, reopening a string of past controversies and warning that the former vice president must be kept away from the national treasury. Morka's statement coincided with Atiku's unveiling of a 69-member Presidential Campaign Council, which the ruling party sought to frame as an opportunity to litigate the ADC candidate's integrity ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
The ADC then turned the APC's attack on Atiku's suitability to manage public funds against President Bola Tinubu, citing a United States forfeiture case involving $460,000 from an account in Tinubu's name that arose from narcotics trafficking allegations. "Tinubu's 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. He detailed what he described as specific connections in the record, including an introduction to First Heritage Bank by Adegboyega Mueez Akande, an $80,000 transfer linked to Akande shortly after Tinubu opened an account, and a $5,000 cashier's cheque payable to Akande's wife, Audrey. "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 Council also cited a US federal court ruling 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. Shaibu said the President should support the fullest lawful disclosure of the relevant records and explain what they contain. He anticipated the APC's likely response, noting that "a search result is not a conviction," but argued that this observation did not erase the questions surrounding the records. "Yes, the case before the court concerns access to records. The records concern an investigation. Both facts can be true at once," he said. The Council also recalled Tinubu's 2011 Code of Conduct Tribunal case over alleged foreign bank accounts, noting that the charges were struck out after the tribunal found that the Code of Conduct Bureau had not followed the required procedure, and said the APC should apply the same respect for the record when discussing Atiku.
On the Mambilla arbitration, the ADC rejected Morka's interpretation of the tribunal's findings, saying the panel questioned the explanation for a $500,000 payment to Jennifer Douglas but did not find that Atiku received a bribe or used his office to secure the disputed contract. "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 made a similar argument about a 2010 US Senate report on transactions involving Atiku and Douglas, saying the report did not establish Atiku's criminal guilt or find that he had been convicted of any offence.
The exchange between the ADC and the APC is the latest escalation in a political confrontation that has intensified since the ruling party opened its offensive against Atiku's record. The APC's statement on Thursday, issued under Morka's signature, drew on a litany of allegations spanning decades, including the Mambilla project, the Siemens bribery scandal, the William Jefferson case and the Petroleum Technology Development Fund controversy. The party said these were matters documented in official records, tribunal proceedings and international inquiries, and argued that they raised legitimate questions about Atiku's fitness for office. The ADC's response seeks to reframe the debate by demanding judicial proof rather than political assertion, while simultaneously turning the spotlight on the President's own legal and financial record.
The dispute comes less than four months before the 2027 presidential election, scheduled for January 16, with the governorship and state assembly elections following on February 6. Atiku is seeking the presidency on the ADC platform, with former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi as his running mate. President Tinubu is seeking a second term on the APC ticket. The contest has already produced a series of bitter exchanges over records, allegations and counter-allegations, with each side seeking to disqualify the other in the eyes of voters.
Atiku has consistently maintained that no court in Nigeria or abroad has convicted him of corruption, narcotics offences or any other criminal offence. In previous statements, he has challenged the APC to produce evidence of any corruption verdict against him, saying that recycling old allegations would not stop his campaign. The ADC's latest statement reiterates that position while attempting to shift the burden of proof onto the ruling party. Whether the strategy will resonate with voters or be dismissed as deflection remains to be seen, but the Council has made its position clear: Morka may raise each matter, but he may not strip away the distinctions and present the resulting fiction as a judgment against Atiku. As Shaibu put it, the APC spokesman cannot manufacture a conviction.
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