From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The African Democratic Congress ( ADC) Presidential Campaign Council has said that insults on its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, by the All Progressives Congress (APC) would not answer questions why food, fuel have become unaffordable under the President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
The Campaign Council, in a statement by
by its Director of Strategic Communications, Phrank Shaibu, accused the APC of pilling rumours and insinuations against Atiku, and expects Nigerians take them as evidence against its presidential candidate.
The Campaign Council, which was reacting to allegations by APC spokesman, Felix Morka, against Atiku said the ruling party’s allegations against its candidate cannot also bury the records of the President.
Morka,in a statement,on Thursday,had alleged that the ADC candidate was too corrupt to be President, and urged Nigerians not to vote for him in the January 16 2027 presidential election.
However, the ADC Campaign Council, stated that the APC warning on Atiku was ” a remarkable sermon from the party of a president whose accounts were the subject of a United States forfeiture case arising from narcotics trafficking allegations.”
It challenged President Tinubu to support the fullest lawful disclosure of his records in the United States and explain what they contain, noting that the Presidency’s description of the current US litigation, involving the President as a civil dispute over access to records did not answer the historical question.
“Morka’s colleagues will rush to tell Nigerians that a search result is not a conviction. Nobody has said it is. But that observation does not erase the court’s finding that Tinubu was a subject of an investigation. Nigerians deserve to know what the records say, what role he played in the events they describe, and why disclosure has been resisted.”
“Yes, the case before the court concerns access to records. The records concern an investigation. Both facts can be true at once. A press statement from Abuja cannot erase a finding in a Washington courtroom,” it stated.
The Campaign Council recalled that Tinubu also appeared before Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Tribunal in 2011 over allegations that he operated foreign bank accounts while serving as Lagos State governor.
“The charges were struck out after the tribunal found that the Code of Conduct Bureau had not followed the required procedure. Tinubu was not convicted, and the Council said the APC was entitled to describe that outcome accurately.It must show the same respect for the record when Atiku’s name is involved.
“The APC cannot lecture Nigerians about integrity while refusing to explain a glaring discrepancy in the educational records associated with President Tinubu. A college application record names Government College Lagos as the school from which he graduated in 1970. The school’s own old boys’ association says it was founded in 1974. How does anyone graduate from a school four years before it opens? ”
Furthermore, the ADC Campaign Council, while responding to issues relating to the Mambilla arbitration, noted that “Morka had again confused a question raised by a tribunal with a finding it never made. The tribunal questioned Leno Adesanya’s explanation for a $500,000 payment to Jennifer Douglas. It did not find that Atiku received a bribe or used his office to secure the disputed Mambilla contract for Sunrise. Besides, the tribunal held that there was actually no contract. So, the purported bribe was to what end?
“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.
“The same distinction applied to the 2010 United States Senate report. The report examined transfers involving Atiku and Douglas, but did not adjudicate Atiku’s criminal guilt. It discussed Siemens payments to an account held by Douglas without establishing that Atiku received them.
” It stated that no evidence was introduced at William Jefferson’s trial showing Atiku sought or accepted a bribe from him. It recorded a Nigerian Senate committee’s recommendation for sanctions over PTDF, but found no evidence that the Senate imposed them.
“Morka may raise each matter. He may not strip away the report’s distinctions and present the resulting fiction as a judgment against Atiku. If he claims there is a conviction, let him identify the court and publish the judgment.”
It added that APC’s attack also invited Nigerians to compare records of leadership, noting that “during Atiku’s first term as vice president, the administration introduced Universal Basic Education. Atiku chaired the National Council on Privatisation and held responsibility for a major part of its economic reform programme. Those were the responsibilities he held within an administration whose work Nigerians can assess.
“Tinubu has governed for more than three years. Nigerians can assess his leadership every time they buy food, pay for transport or settle an electricity bill. Morka can recite inflated reserve claims and attack Atiku all day. Neither exercise reduces those costs,” Shaibu said.
“We sympathise with Morka’s predicament. Defending a government that has made daily life painfully expensive cannot be an easy assignment. But Nigerians will not forget what they pay at the market and the petrol station simply because an APC spokesman has found another insult for Atiku.”
The Campaign Council noted that Atiku would answer serious questions with facts and challenged Tinubu and the APC to do the same, stating that “let the relevant FBI records be released, with lawful protections for confidential sources and other individuals. Let Tinubu answer the questions their contents raise. A President who asks Nigerians to trust him with another term for the nation’s highest office should trust them with the truth about his own record.”
The post 2027: APC insults on Atiku won’t answer questions on hardship – ADC appeared first on The Sun Nigeria.
<small>Source: The Sun Nigeria — read the original story there.</small>
