APC campaign: Atiku lacks character to be Nigeria’s president

The All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council says Atiku Abubakar, standard bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), lacks the requisite character to be the country’s president.

Bayo Onanuga, the campaign’s media director, said this in a statement on Sunday in reaction to comments credited to the PDP.

The country’s major opposition party had asked the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to probe Bola Tinubu, candidate of the APC, over his alleged links to drug trafficking.

Recently on social media, there have been what appeared to be certified true copies of a settlement order issued by a US court domiciled in the northern district of Illinois regarding forfeiture of funds in some bank accounts linked to someone named “Bola Tinubu”.

The court ruled that the sum of $460,000 in one of the accounts be forfeited to the US government.

But Festus Keyamo, spokesperson of the campaign, said the sum was a deduction for tax.

In the statement, Onanuga said it appears the former vice president and his party have not recovered “from the bombshell the APC PCC released last week”.

The APC campaign had asked the relevant authorities to arrest and probe Abubakar over a “leaked audio” in which he is said to have set up shell corporations to divert public funds while he was in office.

“Since the scandal broke out, along with legal action to compel anti-graft agencies to perform their role, Atiku and his party, PDP, have laboured in vain to deflect and cover up with their series of ad hominem arguments,” the media director said.

“Instead of Atiku to apologise to Nigerians for abusing his office and position of trust as vice president in the past, his spokesmen continue to dig deeper into the hole they already found themselves.

“Our stand remains that Atiku Abubakar lacks the character to be the president of Nigeria.”