Atiku: Tinubu using EFCC to intimidate opposition into APC

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar says the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government is using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to intimidate opposition figures into defecting.

In a statement posted on his X account on Tuesday, Atiku reacted to the detention of former Sokoto State Governor, Senator Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, describing it as “a continuation of the Tinubu-led administration’s agenda to harass, intimidate, and decimate the opposition.”

He alleged that the EFCC has become a political weapon rather than an anti-graft agency. “We are living witnesses to a growing trend where the state and its operators have assumed the role of a bully by making corruption and the fight against it a political agenda. Certainly, that is not the objective for which I worked hard during our administration to create the EFCC,” he said.

According to him, opposition members face “phantom corruption allegations” until they are “coerced into the political agenda of President Tinubu” after which “their ‘sins’ are forgiven.”

“That, certainly, is not how to fight the monster of corruption,” Atiku continued. “Such tendencies only fuel the very problem they claim to address. We have seen how the EFCC has been used to empty opposition state governors into the ruling party, and the tea party is not about to end anytime soon.”

He urged Nigerians, civil society, and the international community to condemn the politicization of anti-corruption efforts. “Our assurance to Nigerians is that we would never succumb to these anti-democratic machinations of railroading our people into a one-party dictatorship,” he said.