The media and public discourse have been awashe with damning reports of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s alleged dealings in local and international bribery and corruption schemes.
Ghosts of his sordid past continue, restlessly, to haunt and warn that Atiku must never again be allowed anywhere close to such a commanding position of trust and responsibility as the presidency. As a former public official, Atiku’s record is an executive summary of some of Nigeria’s vilest episodes of corruption and cronyism that pulverised our economy and decimated public trust.
Nigeria’s upcoming presidential election presents the electorate the opportunity to deal a final blow to Atiku’s desperate quest for presidential power and save the country from his ravenous plunder.
From the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project and the Siemens bribery scandal to the William Jefferson case, the PTDF funds controversy, and the US Senate investigation into suspicious financial transactions, Atiku’s name is engraved ingloriously on files and dossiers of onshore and offshore financial scandals and atrocities.
These are not mere allegations. They are matters that are well documented in official records, tribunal proceedings, government investigations, national and foreign legislative reports, and international financial inquiries. Together, they raise legitimate questions about the fitness for probity and accountability of this serial presidential contender.
The latest controversy surrounding the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project is particularly troubling. An International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration Tribunal in Paris examined a $500,000 payment made in January 2003 by Leno Adesanya, promoter of Sunrise Power, to Jennifer Douglas, Atiku’s wife at the time, through an offshore company. Reportedly, the payment occurred around the period when the Mambilla contract was awarded with Atiku as Vice President. Atiku declined an opportunity to explain and justify what clearly was an illegal bribe payment to his wife.
There was the Siemens bribery scandal in which US authorities alleged that Siemens paid at least $4.5 million in bribes to secure Nigerian telecommunications contracts during the Obasanjo administration, with approximately $2.8 million reportedly passing through a bank account owned by Jennifer Douglas, Atiku’s ex-wife. Siemens subsequently agreed to pay approximately $1.6 billion in penalties to US and German authorities over global bribery violations. Again, Atiku’s vice presidential soiled fingerprints are in focus.
And there was the William Jefferson bribery case, with Atiku and his close associates falling under the scrutiny of American investigators. US court records indicated that former Congressman William Jefferson disclosed paying Atiku $100,000 to influence a proposed business partnership involving iGate and Netlink Digital Television. Jefferson was eventually convicted and sentenced to prison. Again, Atiku’s dark web of corrupt influence peddling and abuse of office is on display.
The 2010 report of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that linked Atiku and his ex-wife, Jennifer Douglas, to more than $40 million in suspicious funds transferred into the United States through offshore companies and lodged in over 30 shadowy bank accounts associated with his ex-wife, Jennifer Douglas and her family again tells a sordid tale of a man who cannot be trusted with the nation’s treasury.
Atiku’s sudden u-turn from his 2023 policy position in favour of fuel subsidy removal to his new promise to restore the fuel subsidy regime, if elected, must be understood as his latest device to lay his hands on, and squander, the country’s 18-year foreign reserve high of over $54 billion built up from $3 billion by President Bola Tinubu in less than 4 years through bold and prudent economic reforms. The National Treasury that President Tinubu has built strong is what Atiku desires to scatter and plunder under the cover of his fake and unrealistic promise to restore the ruinous fuel subsidy regime.
In his book, My Watch, President Olusegun Obasanjo characterised Atiku as possessing a propensity for corruption, a tendency toward disloyalty, poor judgment, and a readiness to sacrifice the national interest for selfish gains. In August 2026, Obasanjo described his decision to select Atiku as his running mate in 1999 as the biggest mistake of his presidency. He stated, “The man I picked as my running mate, my number two, if I had known him as I came to know him later, I would not have picked him.” That is an open-and-shut reference by the former president, Atiku’s principal, to his unfitness for public office.
Atiku was an accidental vice president and categorically unfit for the office of president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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