Nigeria's
former Vice President has broken his silence on accusations of being a
corrupt person, a label that was created in the wake of a political
tussle between him and former President, Olusegun Obasanjo.
Atiku Abubakar
In an interview with some officials from the media team of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), published in the latest
edition of the anti-graft agency’s Zero Tolerance Magazine, former Vice
President, Atiku Abubakar, denied being a corrupt person.
Recall that the former VP was labelled 'corrupt' in the wake of a
political tussle between him and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and
while responding to a question on how allegations of corruption became
his albatross in the race for the presidency in 2006, he said:
“Well if Atiku is corrupt, he would have been found guilty of
corruption by all the panels and probes and cases brought before
courts.”
“I remember the only corruption indictment against me was a
white paper which was cooked up by our own administration over night to
including the very EFCC that I helped found and other cabinet ministers,
which I challenged in court.
“The court rightly dismissed all those indictments as being
mere political; and till today nobody has ever indicted me of
corruption,” he said.
According to DailyTrust, also responding to allegations of
corruption leveled against him by the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir
El-Rufai in his book, 'Accidental Public Servant', Atiku said el-Rufai did not give any evidence or prove where I was corrupt.
“This is the same el-Rufai and others who incorporated
Transcorp during my time as Vice President and offered me shares and I
declined.
“I wrote to them officially to say it was unethical of me to
have accepted those offers, so, where is the corruption toga coming
from,” he said.
Asked to explain the bribe scandal of N50 million, involving
Senator Ibrahim Mantu, Jonathan Zwingina and others during el-Rufai
ministerial confirmation screening, Atiku said: “No, that is absolutely not true.”
Atiku noted that el-Rufai ran to him and complained that he was
denied confirmation by the Senate, adding that he called Mantu and
others and confronted them.
He said: “It is also on record, because I controlled campaign
funds, every Senator benefited from those funds; and el-Rufai now went
and said those campaign funds were meant to be bribe.”
“Of course my boss, the president, investigated the story and
found out that indeed every Senator got contributions from the campaign
fund which I was managing. So where is the corruption in that?,” he concluded.
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