From Cyril Mbah, Abuja.
The All Progressives Congress, (APC), has declared that Nigerians must not allow former Vice President Atiku Abubakar anywhere near the national treasury in 2027, following what it called damning reports of his alleged involvement in local and international bribery and corruption schemes that have dominated public discourse.
In a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Barrister Felix Morka, CON, and issued in Abuja on Thursday, the ruling party warned that ghosts of Atiku’s sordid past continue to haunt the nation, insisting that his record as a former public official represents an executive summary of some of Nigeria’s worst episodes of corruption and cronyism that damaged the economy and eroded public trust.
The APC said the upcoming 2027 presidential election offers the electorate a chance to put a final stop to Atiku’s desperate and serial quest for presidential power and save the country from what it described as his ravenous plunder.
According to the party, Atiku’s name features ingloriously in multiple dossiers of financial scandals both onshore and offshore, ranging from the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project and the Siemens bribery scandal to the William Jefferson case, the PTDF funds controversy, and the US Senate investigation into suspicious financial transactions.
The party argued that these are 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 raise legitimate questions about Atiku’s fitness in terms of probity and accountability.
Focusing on the Mambilla controversy, the APC cited an International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration Tribunal in Paris which examined a $500,000 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, reportedly around the period the Mambilla contract was awarded while Atiku was Vice President, alleging that Atiku failed to justify the payment.
The statement also recalled the Siemens bribery scandal, in which US authorities alleged that Siemens paid at least $4.5 million in bribes to secure Nigerian telecommunications contracts during the Obasanjo administration, with about $2.8 million reportedly passing through a bank account owned by Jennifer Douglas, adding that Siemens later paid about $1.6 billion in penalties to US and German authorities.
It further referenced the William Jefferson case, stating that US court records indicated that former US Congressman William Jefferson disclosed paying Atiku $100,000 to influence a proposed business partnership involving iGate and Netlink Digital Television, a case that led to Jefferson’s conviction and prison sentence.
The APC also cited the 2010 report of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which linked Atiku and his ex-wife Jennifer Douglas to more than $40 million in suspicious funds transferred into the United States through offshore companies and lodged in over 30 bank accounts associated with her and her family, describing it as evidence that he cannot be trusted with the nation’s treasury.
The party interpreted Atiku’s recent promise to restore fuel subsidy, after supporting its removal in 2023, as a device to squander Nigeria’s foreign reserves which it said grew from $3 billion to over $54 billion under President Bola Tinubu.
The statement quoted former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s assessment of Atiku in his book My Watch and his August 2026 remark that picking Atiku as running mate in 1999 was the biggest mistake of his presidency, concluding that Atiku was an accidental Vice President and categorically unfit to be President.
