The entourage of Nigerian Vice-President Abubakar Atiku has alleged there is a plot to bar him from contesting next year’s presidential election by trying to implicate him in a corruption probe involving a prominent telecoms businessman.
Atiku’s media assistant Garba Shehu said in a statement late on Tuesday the allegation was aimed at tarnishing his boss’s image and that of former military ruler Ibrahim Babaginda so that the government would have an excuse to ”bar them from higher public office”.
He said Atiku had no involvement in any shady business deals with Michael Adenuga, chairperson of Globacom, who is being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
EFCC officials said Adenuga, arrested on Sunday, was under investigation over ”some transactions in which his name has been mentioned”. He was released on Tuesday on bail.
”No financial deals with Otunba Adenuga,” Shehu said. But he acknowledged the businessman was ”one of several friends” of the vice-president.
Atiku and Babaginda belong to President Olusegun Obasanjo’s ruling People’s Democratic Party and both have said they intend to run for president in 2007.
Relations between Atiku and Obasanjo became strained when the vice-president accused the president of attempting to change the Constitution to allow him to seek a third term of office in 2007.
The current Nigerian Constitution limits the president to two mandates.
Although Obasanjo never publicly admitted to any such intention, his supporters lobbied Parliament — albeit unsuccessfully — to approve the amendment.
Africa’s most populous country goes to the polls in April next year to choose a successor to Obasanjo, a retired general who was elected president in May 1999, ending almost 16 years of military rule. — Sapa-AFP