ADC presidential candidate and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has dismissed allegations made by former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Babachir Lawal, describing them as “an unfortunate cocktail of bitterness, conjecture and political revisionism masquerading as public interest.”
In a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Mr. Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said Nigerians who watched Lawal’s recent television interview were presented with “a man armed with outrage but bereft of evidence; rich in allegations but poor in facts.”
According to Shaibu, what was portrayed as a serious political intervention ultimately collapsed into speculation and unsubstantiated claims.
“Mr. Lawal spent nearly an hour making grave accusations about the conduct of the ADC presidential primary. Yet he failed to produce a single piece of verifiable evidence. No document. No petition. No result sheet. No witness statement. No recording. Nothing,” the statement said.
“He arrived with accusations. He left with accusations. In between, the evidence never arrived.”
Shaibu argued that a former SGF and former National Vice Chairman of a political party should understand the difference between evidence and suspicion.
“Instead, Nigerians were treated to stories about unnamed callers, unnamed officials, unnamed witnesses and unnamed conspirators. By the time the interview ended, the only thing in abundance was speculation,” he added.
The Atiku aide described Lawal as “a disappointed political actor struggling to come to terms with the failure of his preferred candidate,” alleging that Lawal openly aligned himself with another aspirant before the conclusion of the process.
“Having failed in that objective, he now seeks to dress personal disappointment in the borrowed robes of moral outrage,” Shaibu stated.
He also faulted what he described as contradictions in Lawal’s remarks, particularly claims portraying Atiku as both politically irrelevant and powerful enough to allegedly orchestrate manipulation across thousands of wards nationwide.
“What makes this theory particularly absurd is that it requires Nigerians to believe that thousands of ADC members across the federation abandoned their own judgment and surrendered their votes to an invisible conspiracy directed by a man whom Mr. Lawal simultaneously describes as politically inactive,” he said.
Shaibu further questioned Lawal’s motives, accusing him of attempting to discredit Atiku before Christian communities in the Middle Belt and other regions where the former Vice President enjoys support.
“More revealing, however, was Mr. Lawal’s astonishing confession on national television that if he ever needed money, all he had to do was call President Tinubu and the money would reach him before he got home,” the statement added.
The statement maintained that Lawal’s allegations lacked credibility because no evidence was presented to support them.
“Given every opportunity to substantiate his claims, he left the studio exactly as he entered it — with accusations but without proof, with outrage but without evidence, and with bitterness but without credibility,” Shaibu said.
He stressed that while Lawal was entitled to his opinions and political preferences, he was “not entitled to his own facts.”
“As far as we are concerned, this is the final response to Mr. Lawal’s increasingly desperate attempts to remain politically relevant through sensationalism and character assassination,” the statement concluded.
