By El-Ameen Ibrahim
The Atiku-Okowa Presidential Campaign Council has accused the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, for allegedly involving in a high-level criminal racket through which he is reported to have been sabotaging the system, intercepting and diverting millions of new naira notes meant for distribution to Nigerians for his selfish purposes.
The campaign organisation also stated that Tinubu was the real enemy of Nigerians and not the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, as Tinubu alleged.
The spokesperson for the campaign council, Kola Ologbondiyan, made the allegations through a statement on Friday.
Ologbondiyan further alleged that Tinubu was the mastermind of the new naira notes crunch who had made the people to suffer untold hardship ever known in the history of the nation.
The statement partly read, “The Campaign alerts Nigerians of a high-level criminal racket through which Tinubu is reported to have been sabotaging the system, intercepting and diverting millions of new naira notes meant for distribution to Nigerians for his selfish ‘Emilokan’ purposes.
“It is indeed despicable that Tinubu, knowing that he has been exposed of being criminally responsible for the biting cash crunch on Nigerians, is seeking to divert public attention from his heinous crime by criticising Atiku Abubakar’s widely applauded patriotic call for the extension of currency swap deadline.
“Our campaign challenges the APC presidential candidate to come clean on allegations that he has been using his various criminal special purpose vehicle companies as well as fraudulent officials in some APC-led states to intercept and mop up cash to the detriment of millions of Nigerians.”
The campaign organisation noted that “in the desperation to cover his tracks, Tinubu, in his elements, as the Nigerian ‘Artful Dodger’, has mounted a campaign of calumny against the Federal Government on the scarcity of the naira while allegedly secretly intercepting and diverting the notes for his selfish use.”
It stated that it was despicable that the Tinubu campaign would be engaged in the activities that were responsible for the scarcity of the naira, for which Nigerians were suffering untold distress, yet he mounted the soap box to create the impression that he was the champion of the people.
The campaign council noted that it was not surprised that the APC presidential candidate could engage in such alleged shady activities against Nigerians given his reputation as a “bullion van” politician as well as long record of “alleged frauds, including reported looting of Lagos assets as well as trafficking in narcotics for which he was convicted and made to forfeit the sum of $460,000 to the United States.”
The campaign council urged Tinubu to own up to the frustration that Nigerians were presently confronting and stop “shedding his usual crocodile tears.”
It added that “Nigerians are not unaware that Tinubu has bluntly refused to advise this administration on the negatives of its policies just because he wanted it to fail to enable him to appear as a messiah.
“It is absurd that Tinubu prioritised his ambition above the wellbeing of over 200 million Nigerians on behalf of whom Atiku Abubakar appealed to the Federal Government to ameliorate the situation and ensure that the new naira notes are made available to the people.”
*Text, except headline, courtesy of THE PUNCH
