“How does a serious government budget N6.44 billion for presidential support for World Cup qualifiers after the country had already been eliminated? What competition was the money intended to support? Who inserted the provision, who approved it and who was expected to benefit from an expenditure whose stated purpose had already ceased to exist?” Atiku queried.

‘Nigerians expected a commander-in-chief leading from the front. Following the successful rescue operation, the president ought to have immediately addressed the nation alongside his defence chiefs’

Section 80 is unequivocal: no money shall be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund except in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly

“We are fully aware of their plots. While they seek to sow confusion within the opposition, we know their real target is the ADC because it represents the most credible alternative. If the All Progressives Congress (APC) is truly confident in its popularity, why is it so terrified of the ADC?” Atiku queried.

“It is the coming together of two tested statesmen with experience, national reach, and leadership capacity required to rescue Nigeria”

“I don’t believe it’s the South. I think you have the Igbos, who are very different culturally and historically from the Yorubas of the southwest, who are very different historically and culturally from the various ethnicities that are in the Niger Delta.

“I think that his biggest achievement has been making Nigerians poorer, and it’s sad that, negatively, Nigerians are poorer today, and the reason we are poorer is because of the instability of the economy,” he said.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has dismissed allegations by a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Mr. Babachir Lawal, over the conduct of the African Democratic Congress ADC presidential primary, describing them as a cocktail of bitterness, conjecture, and political revisionism dressed up as public interest.

Atiku noted that rather than the intervention of a genuine whistleblower, what Lawal’s interview revealed was “a disappointed political actor struggling to come to terms with the failure of his preferred candidate.”

“The cruelty of such a response is difficult to comprehend. Parents whose children have been torn from their arms are not asking for rice. Mothers who do not know whether their children are hungry, sick, traumatised, or even alive are not demanding palliatives.