Drug case: Your insults can’t bury the American record, Atiku tells Tinubu

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of resorting to personal attacks and distractions instead of addressing serious issues arising from documented American records. In a statement issued on Wednesday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku denounced Tinubu's attempts to change the subject by mocking Karl Von Batten's personal life, ancestry, and business history.

Shaibu emphasized that these distractions would not erase the documented evidence. He pointed out that the $1.2 million engagement between Atiku and Von Batten-Montague-York was voluntarily registered with the US Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Shaibu questioned why Tinubu's name was linked to a federal narcotics and money-laundering investigation and why a US District Court had entered a decree forfeiting $460,000 held in Tinubu's name.

He clarified that a civil forfeiture is not a criminal conviction and that the records in question are part of an American judicial record. Shaibu criticized Tinubu for hypocrisy, noting that while Tinubu's administration spent $750,000 monthly on lobbying (equivalent to $4.5 million for the first six months and potentially $9 million), Atiku's $1.2 million engagement was dismissed as desperation.

He emphasized that the issue was not about the right to engage lobbyists but the discrepancy in the scrutiny of both sides. Shaibu urged Tinubu to focus on the affordability issues faced by Nigerians, such as the rising cost of food, transportation, and electricity, rather than engaging in personal attacks. He stated that Nigerians seek answers to their daily struggles and cannot be swayed by insults or investigations into others' personal lives.