By Eshioromeh Sebastian
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has confronted President Bola Tinubu over a startling allegation that some ministers paid billions of naira in bribes to secure their appointments, demanding a full investigation and the public naming of those involved.
The demand followed a claim by Alwan Hassan, a spokesperson for the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, who alleged during an interview on Arise News on Thursday that some ministers spent billions to get their posts and subsequently focused on recovering their “investment.”
Atiku, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, took to X on Friday to challenge the President directly.
“Bola @officialABAT, your campaign spokesman has admitted that ministers paid billions in bribes to secure their appointments,” Atiku wrote. “You appointed them, so who received the money? Nigerians deserve names, not silence.”
The former Vice-President also accused the administration’s economic policies of driving the rising cost of living, alleging that the President withholds funds from ministries because he distrusts his own ministers.
“Your government’s reckless decisions have driven the cost-of-living crisis, and when you withhold funds from ministries because you distrust your own ministers, Nigerians are left paying for a government that has abandoned them,” he said.
Hassan, while defending Tinubu’s direct oversight of government revenue and expenditure, insisted the alleged practice was not peculiar to the ruling APC, claiming it had persisted under successive administrations.
“The way Asiwaju is hands-on on the expenditure of our revenue is fantastic, and I love it. A lot of ministers pay billions and billions, and, you know, to get themselves appointed. The first thing they think of is how to recoup that money,” he said.
“But this is the truth I’m telling you about our country, not just APC, before APC, the biggest fraudulent people you arrest after every government are ministers.”
He questioned the need to leave budget implementation entirely to ministers, saying the President had personally overseen much of the administration’s spending.
“Whatever it is a budget is supposed to do in this country in the last three and a half years, Asiwaju has done it by himself, why do we need ministers? Why do we need a budget to be given to ministers?” Hassan asked.
He also defended the administration’s record on pension payments and cited investments in electricity metering, electric vehicles, surveillance drones, and local ammunition production as evidence of performance, expressing confidence that the achievements would boost the APC’s prospects ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
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