The Atiku Media Team has urged President Bola Tinubu and his team to stop chasing shadows, and spare Nigeria’s image further damage by coming clean on the controversies surrounding his life.
The team gave the challenge at a briefing in Abuja yesterday.
Media Adviser to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Mazi Paul Ibe, who was flanked by two of his colleagues during the briefing, noted that President Tinubu’s team appeared fixated on an inconsequential alleged discrepancy in the day/ date of an affidavit deposed to by Atiku to officially change his name over 50 years ago.
He said: “Since the discovery of documents with Chicago State University brought to the fore the litany of certificate forgeries and impersonation by President Bola A. Tinubu, there have been attempts by many of his media aides to create a parallel narrative about the public life of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
“It was obvious from the start of their journey into futility that what the media aides and supporters of Bola A. Tinubu were doing was a random bite of the public profile of Atiku Abubakar until they found an item they could chomp with their filthy teeth.
Eventually, they found that the affidavit that Atiku Abubakar deposed to in August 18, 1973, wherein he expressed his wishes to be publicly known as Atiku Abubakar was signed on a Saturday. And voila! The APC e-rats found what they had been looking for. For them, it isn’t important that the person called Bola A. Tinubu was discovered to be the name of a female, nor was it important that Bola A. Tinubu forged a certificate he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission or that Bola A. Tinubu is the Guinea pig student of the Government College Lagos, who was used to test run the school four years before it was founded.
“All that mattered to them was to pick a hole in Atiku Abubakar’s public profile. Like the late Fela Anikulapo said ‘I be thief, you be robber! You are also a thief is not a defence to an accusation of theft.’
“They thought they found someone else to share the inglorious stage of certificate forgery with. So, it was found out that Atiku’s affidavit was signed on a Saturday, and they went into a frenzy; oiled as a diesel train.
“We conducted research into the registry of the Lagos State high courts in the same year, 1973, to see if it was really an absurdity to have court papers signed on a Saturday.
“The outcome of our findings showed clearly that there are court papers that were signed on Saturdays in the year 1973! Atiku Abubakar’s affidavit was not the only one signed on Saturday as the corn-men would want you to believe.
“A president must mirror the moral rectitude of trust and transparency. To be called the president of a country is to be an approximation of the values that such a country stands for. Nigeria does not stand for forgeries and impersonation.
“It is, therefore, on this note that we, yet again, call on President Bola A. Tinubu to follow the example of Atiku Abubakar to clear the air about all doubts and kuru kere about his past”.