The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has challenged the presidential candidate of the People Democratic Party (PDP) Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to come clean on the alleged ban on him from traveling to the United States of America (USA) over corrupt practices.
The party also insisted that the Dubai meeting attended by Atiku and other PDP leaders was “a last-ditch effort to raise fund to prosecute their campaign.”
APC, in a statement by its Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Yekini Nabena, said the country could not afford to have a “fugitive occupying the highest office in the country.”
The statement noted: “Again, a challenge the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar must take up is coming clean on the nagging issue of his travel ban to the United States of America following his indictment for corruption in that country.
“Truly, we cannot have a fugitive occupying the highest office in the country. Our great country, Nigeria deserves better.”
On the Atiku planning to raise fund for his campaign, Nabena said: “The unwillingness of PDP governors to financially support the 2019 presidential campaign of Atiku Abubakar is already public knowledge. In fact, information is now rife that the Dubai meeting attended by Atiku and other PDP leaders was a last-ditch effort to raise presidential campaign cash from foreign financiers by mortgaging key national economic assets particularly the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as payback.
“This disturbing development must be checked by relevant agencies, particularly the recently established Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), the country’s arm of the global Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) mandated to collect information on suspicious or unusual financial activity suspected of being money laundering and then share such information with relevant anti-crime or regulatory agencies.
“Backed by their discredited cyber-thugs, the PDP in its desperate bid to remain in public reckoning continues to expose itself as a joke before Nigerians. The PDP should know by now that elections are not won through falsehood on the internet, but by valid votes of the electorate who are aware of who ruined the country and who is clearing the rot.”
According to Nabena, it is clear that the country has no credible opposition political party, “but a gang of selfish and mercantile politicians that will do anything to return to elective office.”