By Eshioromeh Sebastian
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has urged Nigerians to ensure that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is kept away from the country’s national treasury by rejecting his presidential ambition in the 2027 election.
In a press statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, CON, and made available to journalists in Abuja on Thursday, the ruling party described Atiku as “categorically unfit” for the office of president, citing a long trail of corruption allegations and financial scandals spanning his tenure as vice president and beyond.
The party said the upcoming presidential election presents the electorate with an opportunity to “deal a final blow to Atiku’s desperate quest for presidential power and save the country from his ravenous plunder.”
The APC listed a series of cases in which it said Atiku’s name featured prominently, including the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project controversy, the Siemens bribery scandal, the William Jefferson case, the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) funds controversy, and a United States Senate investigation into suspicious financial transactions.
According to the statement, an International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration Tribunal in Paris examined a $500,000 payment made in January 2003 by Leno Adesanya, promoter of Sunrise Power, to Jennifer Douglas, said to be Atiku’s wife at the time, through an offshore company. The payment reportedly occurred around the period the Mambilla contract was awarded, with Atiku serving as Vice President.
The party also referenced the Siemens bribery scandal, in which United States authorities alleged that Siemens paid at least $4.5 million in bribes to secure Nigerian telecommunications contracts during the Obasanjo administration, with approximately $2.8 million said to have passed through a bank account owned by Jennifer Douglas. Siemens later agreed to pay about $1.6 billion in penalties to US and German authorities over global bribery violations.
On the William Jefferson case, the APC said US court records indicated that the former Congressman disclosed paying Atiku $100,000 to influence a proposed business partnership involving iGate and Netlink Digital Television. Jefferson was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison.
The statement further cited the 2010 report of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which it said linked Atiku and his ex-wife to more than $40 million in suspicious funds transferred into the United States through offshore companies and lodged in over 30 bank accounts.
“These are not mere allegations. They are matters that are well documented in official records, tribunal proceedings, government investigations, national and foreign legislative reports, and international financial inquiries,” the APC said.
The ruling party also took aim at Atiku’s recent promise to restore the fuel subsidy regime if elected, describing it as a device to “lay his hands on, and squander, the country’s 18-year foreign reserve high of over $54 billion.”
It said President Bola Tinubu had built up the reserve from $3 billion through “bold and prudent economic reforms,” accusing Atiku of seeking to “scatter and plunder” the treasury under the cover of what it called a fake and unrealistic promise.
The APC referenced former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s book, My Watch, in which he characterised Atiku as possessing “a propensity for corruption, a tendency toward disloyalty, poor judgment, and a readiness to sacrifice the national interest for selfish gains.”
It also recalled Obasanjo’s statement in August 2026, in which he described his decision to select Atiku as his running mate in 1999 as “the biggest mistake of his presidency,” quoting him as saying: “The man I picked as my running mate, my number two, if I had known him as I came to know him later, I would not have picked him.”
The APC concluded: “Atiku was an accidental vice president and categorically unfit for the office of president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
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