Atiku’s ambition built on crutches — Presidential Aide

By Precious Mark

Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, has criticized former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s political activities, characterizing his bid for the nation’s highest office as a flight of fancy powered by an ambition on crutches.

Speaking on Saturday, the presidential aide faulted the African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate for engaging in what he described as an unbroken marathon of political self-destruction that heightens ethnic fault lines and weaponizes regional grievances.

“For nearly three decades, the Nigerian political landscape has played host to a singular, interminable political psychodrama: the relentless presidential voyage of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.”

“Five times he has thrown his hat into the national ring; five times he has lost,” he said.

Addressing Atiku’s recent foreign media engagement and advocacy, Dare decried the opposition leader’s decision to hire an American lobbying firm, describing it as an insult to national sovereignty and domestic intellectual capacity.

“His recent resort to grievance offshoring outsourcing political warfare to Washington and reportedly paying `$1.2 million to an American lobbying firm to peddle petitions against a sitting Nigerian President stands as an affront to Nigeria’s sovereignty and a vote of no confidence in its democratic institutions,” Dare said.

“It is also a stinging slight an implicit condescension directed at generations of Nigerian journalists, policy analysts, academics, and public intellectuals who have spent decades analyzing, critiquing, and carrying the burden of the nation’s democratic evolution,” he declared.

The presidential aide further maintained that despite technical legal acquittals, Atiku’s public record remains shadowed by persistent clouds of financial opacity and conflicts of interest dating back to his time in office.

“The most authoritative international documentation of Atiku’s financial entanglements remains the 2010 U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report. The 328-page dossier detailed allegations that the former Vice President utilized offshore shell companies to route more than $40 million in suspect funds into the United States.”

“Domestically, the most spectacular implosion of Atiku’s administrative integrity occurred during his bitter 2006 falling-out with his principal, President Olusegun Obasanjo. Accused of embezzling and mismanaging funds belonging to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Atiku faced administrative panels and subsequent Senate inquiries,” he said.

Dare concluded by asserting that while President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration continues to deliver structural economic reforms, infrastructural expansion, and social safety interventions while Atiku remains trapped in the political past.