Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna state stoked a raging war with former
Vice President Atiku Abubakar, calling him corrupt and daring him to visit
the United States of America to prove he is a clean man.
El Rufai in a statement said while Atiku has already started a 2019
Presidential campaign, he should clear himself of an allegation of a
$40million wire transfer he received as bribe from Siemens.
The Statement reads:
This statement is issued in response to the latest falsehoods to emerge
from Alhaji Atiku Abubukar. He has a record of spewing outright lies and
innuendo against my person. As we struggle to build a law-abiding society
and secure progressive outcomes for our people, we cannot allow the
triumph on these shores of those who will have us move to a post-factual
world. Not even from a man as practiced as Alhaji Atiku is in the dark
arts of damaging other people through a campaign of lies from him and his
media machine.
Therefore, I am constrained to provide a response to the fake news and
irresponsible revision of recent history by Alhaji Atiku.
I never had anything to do with the incorporation of Transcorp. Those that
established that company and fronted it like Festus Odimegwu, Tony
Elumelu, Otunba Lawal Solarin and Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke are still around and
alive. As such I could not have and did not offer Alhaji Atiku any shares
in Transcorp. I declined the shares that were offered to me. Having done
that, how could I have offered anyone shares?
In fact, I advised President Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Atiku and then
finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala not to accept the shares that were
then being offered by the promoters of Transcorp. My counsel to them was
based on the grounds that they would face conflicts of interest when
Transcorp bids for privatization assets. At the time Alhaji Atiku and
Ngozi were chair and vice-chair of the National council on Privatization,
and were particularly directly involved in approving the sales of
state-owned enterprises and assets.
It is too late in the day to try to pretend that the fiasco concerning the
attempt by then Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Jonathan Zwingina to extort
money from me for Senate clearance never happened. All Alhaji Atiku has
just done is confirm that he paid the Senators, as I revealed in Page 139
of my book.
When I published The Accidental Public Servant in 2013, Alhaji Atiku
unleashed his media team in a campaign of vilification. Despite the
viciousness of the attacks, they did not contest or explain away his
shenanigans that were detailed in the book, from the Ericsson manoeuvre,
to the Abuja water treatment plant contract and his obsession with
marabouts and their assurances of the political big prize. He might also
consider a full reckoning for what he and his acolytes did with public
funds in the PTDF imbroglio, rather than indulging the usual bold face of
the Nigerian big-man.
As a federal public servant, my oath of allegiance appropriately stood
with the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not the big men whose conduct I was
privileged to witness at close quarters. People like Alhaji Atiku think
that loyalty to them should be the goal of a public officer, and that it
should trump the oath of allegiance to the country.
Our Alhaji Atiku is already running for 2019, and he thinks that he can
make people like us collateral damage in his attempt to rejuvenate his
image. This obsession for power inclined him to support the rebellion
against the party that manifested in the National Assembly, and is
continuing with obvious disrespect for the incumbent president. Everyone
knows that I support and will continue to work for the success of
President Muhammadu Buhari as he leads our country through tough times.
Everyone is entitled to rehabilitation. But that often requires coming
clean with the people. Can Alhaji Atiku explain the findings in the report
of the United States Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations
which detailed a pattern of wire transfers of more than USD 40m from
offshore companies like Siemens into bank accounts controlled by him and
one of his wives. The report detailing the US Senate findings is online,
as one of four case histories of foreign corruption in the USA. Alhaji
Atiku should tell a better tale of why he is avoiding America.
Someone as obsessed by Nigeria’s presidency as he is, should clear up such
matters conclusively. We wait to see how well he does with that.
Signed
Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai
15th November 2016