Former vice president and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the 2019 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has described as recycled and regurgitated lies reports linking him with a recent United States report on visa ban and individuals on the country’s watch list.
The former vice president also described the new reports as a desperate gambit by mischief-makers to recast discredited accusations.
In a statement signed by his Media Adviser, Paul Ibe, the former vice president said he is “not under any US watch list, neither has he been charged, or will ever be charged by the United States Justice Department or any other in a foreign jurisdiction.”
Atiku in the statement recalled how mischief-makers re-unearthed the same unfounded rumour just before the February 23, 2019 Presidential election. For the avoidance of doubt, he said he “applied for and received a US visa, whereupon he embarked on a visit to the United States on January 17, 2019, where “he stayed at a hotel just miles to the United States Department of Justice”.
Atiku Abubakar explained that in the course of that trip, he was also received in audience, by officials of the United States Government.
According to him: “These ‘new’ reports are a desperate gambit to recast these discredited accusations. They are meant to divert the attention of Nigerians from the recent statement by the Secretary of State of the United States, Mr Mike Pompeo, announcing visa and travel bans for certain unnamed but notorious individuals”.
He said considering the season that we are in, more of such jaundiced stories seeking to discredit him would come, adding that it needs to be reiterated that him and every member of his family keeps a clean business portfolio that has nothing to do with government resources and in conformity with local and foreign laws of respective countries.
