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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
African Democratic Congress (ADC) 2027 presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has said that recycling old allegations against him would not stop him in next year’s general election.
Atiku, who is also a former Vice President, accused political opposition of allegedly shopping for controversy around about him, because they cannot survive a scrutiny of their records.
The ADC candidate,in a statement by his
Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, noted that the sudden return to allegations rooted in the political battles of the President Olusegun Obasanjo era was an admission that his opponents have run out of answers to hunger, collapsing purchasing power and the unbearable cost of living.
According to him, “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.”
Atiku added “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?”
Furthermore, the former Vice President, while noting that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission ( EFCC) belongs to the country and should investigate” genuine wrongdoing” anywhere, stated that “state institutions must never become emergency political weapons activated whenever those in power are losing the argument on governance.”
He added ‘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.”
