Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna state stoked a raging war with former
\nVice President Atiku Abubakar, calling him corrupt and daring him to visit
\nthe United States of America to prove he is a clean man.<\/p>\n
El Rufai in a statement said while Atiku has already started a 2019
\nPresidential campaign, he should clear himself of an allegation of a
\n$40million wire transfer he received as bribe from Siemens.<\/p>\n
The Statement reads:<\/p>\n
This statement is issued in response to the latest falsehoods to emerge
\nfrom Alhaji Atiku Abubukar. He has a record of spewing outright lies and
\ninnuendo against my person. As we struggle to build a law-abiding society
\nand secure progressive outcomes for our people, we cannot allow the
\ntriumph on these shores of those who will have us move to a post-factual
\nworld. Not even from a man as practiced as Alhaji Atiku is in the dark
\narts of damaging other people through a campaign of lies from him and his
\nmedia machine.<\/p>\n
Therefore, I am constrained to provide a response to the fake news and
\nirresponsible revision of recent history by Alhaji Atiku.<\/p>\n
I never had anything to do with the incorporation of Transcorp. Those that
\nestablished that company and fronted it like Festus Odimegwu, Tony
\nElumelu, Otunba Lawal Solarin and Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke are still around and
\nalive. As such I could not have and did not offer Alhaji Atiku any shares
\nin Transcorp.\u00a0I declined the shares that were offered to me. Having done
\nthat, how could I have offered anyone shares?<\/p>\n
In fact, I advised President Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Atiku and then
\nfinance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala not to accept the shares that were
\nthen being offered by the promoters of Transcorp. My counsel to them was
\nbased on the grounds that they would face conflicts of interest when
\nTranscorp bids for privatization assets. At the time Alhaji Atiku and
\nNgozi were chair and vice-chair of the National council on Privatization,
\nand were particularly directly involved in approving the sales of
\nstate-owned enterprises and assets.<\/p>\n
It is too late in the day to try to pretend that the fiasco concerning the
\nattempt by then Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Jonathan Zwingina to extort
\nmoney from me for Senate clearance never happened.\u00a0All Alhaji Atiku has
\njust done is confirm that he paid the Senators, as I revealed in Page 139
\nof my book.<\/p>\n
When I published The Accidental Public Servant in 2013, Alhaji Atiku
\nunleashed his media team in a campaign of vilification. Despite the
\nviciousness of the attacks, they did not contest or explain away his
\nshenanigans that were detailed in the book, from the Ericsson manoeuvre,
\nto the Abuja water treatment plant contract and his obsession with
\nmarabouts and their assurances of the political big prize. He might also
\nconsider a full reckoning for what he and his acolytes did with public
\nfunds in the PTDF imbroglio, rather than indulging the usual bold face of
\nthe Nigerian big-man.<\/p>\n
As a federal public servant, my oath of allegiance appropriately stood
\nwith the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not the big men whose conduct I was
\nprivileged to witness at close quarters. People like Alhaji Atiku think
\nthat loyalty to them should be the goal of a public officer, and that it
\nshould trump the oath of allegiance to the country.<\/p>\n
Our Alhaji Atiku is already running for 2019, and he thinks that he can
\nmake people like us collateral damage in his attempt to rejuvenate his
\nimage. This obsession for power inclined him to support the rebellion
\nagainst the party that manifested in the National Assembly, and is
\ncontinuing with obvious disrespect for the incumbent president. Everyone
\nknows that I support and will continue to work for the success of
\nPresident Muhammadu Buhari as he leads our country through tough times.<\/p>\n
Everyone is entitled to rehabilitation. But that often requires coming
\nclean with the people. Can Alhaji Atiku explain the findings in the report
\nof the United States Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations
\nwhich detailed a pattern of wire transfers of more than USD 40m from
\noffshore companies like Siemens into bank accounts controlled by him and
\none of his wives. The report detailing the US Senate findings is online,
\nas one of four case histories of foreign corruption in the USA. Alhaji
\nAtiku should tell a better tale of why he is avoiding America.<\/p>\n
Someone as obsessed by Nigeria\u2019s presidency as he is, should clear up such
\nmatters conclusively. We wait to see how well he does with that.<\/p>\n
Signed<\/p>\n
Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai<\/p>\n
15th November 2016<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n