Atiku Replies Presidency, Says Buhari not only Power Drunk but Dictatorial

By Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has insisted that President Muhammadu Buhari is not only power drunk but also dictatorial.

The former vice-president stated this while responding to the Presidency’s statement in response to an interview he granted Bloomberg.

The presidency had said: “President Buhari is uncompromising in the quest to restore probity and accountability to public office. He is uncompromising in cleaning the rot Nigeria was consigned into pre-2015, thus the war against corruption is being fought without fear or favour. The president is equally resolute in the determination to ensure that Nigeria is no longer a mono-economy, depending only on oil.”

However, responding through a statement issued Thursday by his Media Adviser, Mr. Paul Ibe, he said if the above is true, then why did the Presidency do nothing as the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami went to court to secure a kangaroo court order stopping the Senate from investigating who recalled, reinstated and double promoted Abdulrasheed Maina?

Atiku, a presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), stressed further that with Buhari’s statement at the opening ceremony of the 58th Annual General Conference of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Nigerians now understand why this administration continues to flout court orders. This is what happens when a president thinks he is above the law.

He noted: “On the issue of being power-drunk, President Buhari is his own witness against himself. It goes without saying that a president who publicly boasted that the rule of law can be suppressed against certain individuals is not only power drunk, but dictatorial.

“We advise the Presidency to familiarise itself with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended, in order to understand that the rule of law and the fundamental human rights of all Nigerian citizens are guaranteed by that document which the president swore to uphold on May 29, 2015.”

According to Atiku, “If President Buhari is uncompromising in cleaning the rot Nigeria was consigned into pre-2015 then how come the latest Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International reveals that Nigeria is more corrupt today than she was in 2015, having moved 12 steps backwards in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, moving from 136 in 2014 under the PDP to 148 today?”

“Again, we ask how uncompromising a president can be when he allows a minister accused of forgery to remain at her job? He asked.

The former vice-president noted that it appears that the president is surrounded by people who have become his echo chamber and are telling him what he wants to hear, otherwise no one in his right mind would call an administration that increased the price of petrol while at the same time paying more subsidy on the product than the previous government which it accused of ‘subsidy scam’, uncompromising against corruption.

Atiku also noted that more than a year after a panel probed the fantastically corrupt Ikoyi apartment billions affair, nobody knows who owned the money and how $43 million in cash was housed in a government-linked flat.

So much for an uncompromising attitude to corruption, he said.