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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has berated the Presidency for invoking the Chinese legal system, while reacting to its criticism of the President Bola Tinubu administration.
Atiku, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, said the Presidency has scored a “monumental own goal”, noting that its comparison has exposed President Tinubu to greater public scrutiny.
The Presidency, while lambasting Atiku for reportedly engaging lobbyists in the US over a past civil forfeiture case involving President Tinubu, had brought the Chinese criminal justice administration into the mix.
However, the former Vice President, while insisting that he has never been convicted by any court in Nigeria or any other country for any offence, said the Presidency ought to have been circumspect in its reference to China, owing to the records of the present administration.
According to him, “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.
“If, however, the Presidency insists that China is now the standard by which public accountability should be measured, Nigerians are equally entitled to ask what the Chinese authorities would have done in a case involving $460,000 forfeited to the United States Government in a civil forfeiture proceeding.”
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Furthermore, Atiku, who is also the African Democratic Congress (ADC) 2027 presidential candidate, noted that “not in China would a government campaign on Renewed Hope only to deliver renewed hardship to its citizens. These are precisely the reasons the Presidency should have been more circumspect before invoking China.
“That is precisely why the Presidency’s argument has collapsed under the weight of its own contradiction. By invoking China, its spokesman has unwittingly invited Nigerians to apply the very standard he thought would embarrass Atiku Abubakar.”
The Vice President accused the Presidency of allegedly parading a United States Government’s routine reply to its diplomatic correspondence as “a trophy and a certificate of innocence rolled into one.’
“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.
“The lesson here is simple. Those who invoke China must be prepared to accept the Chinese standard—not selectively, not rhetorically, but completely. Accountability is not a buffet from which governments choose only the dishes they find palatable.
“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,” he stated.
