By Nelson Utip
The Presidency has accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of distorting facts on the Lagos – Calabar Coastal Highway, they hold that he is doing so for cheap political gains. The slavo came on Monday in a statement from The Special Adviser to The President on Information & Strategy, Bayo Onanuga who said the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Presidential Candidate in the 2023 election, is fast developing a reputation for distorting and manipulating facts for his self-serving objective of discrediting the current administration.
Onanuga who responded to recent tirades from Atiku against the award of contact and financial implications of the project said that Atiku made wild claims on a number of issues that need to be corrected so that the public will not be misled into accepting fallacies as the truth, adding that the President Bola Tinubu-led administration believes that every true and patriotic Nigerian, regardless of political differences, should work to promote the unity and economic well-being of the country and not blindly criticism genuine efforts of the Federal Government to encourage local and foreign investments into the economy. According to Onanuga, contrary to Atiku’s claims, the present administration has within its first year attracted over $20 billion into the economy.
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He said while President Tinubu was in New Delhi, India for G20 Summit last year August, Indian business leaders committed over $14 billion in new investments, with a substantial part of the sum already in the country. “In an unmistakable vote of confidence in the economic reforms being executed by the Tinubu administration, foreign investment in Nigeria’s stock market has ballooned from N18.12 billion in Q1 2023 to N93.37 billion in Q1 2024, an increase of 415%. The last time Nigeria saw such level of investment was in the first quarter of 2019, when N97.6 billion was invested. The market, since Tinubu came to power, has broken records and created more wealth for the investors.
“During President Tinubu’s recent trip to The Netherlands, the Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, announced a fresh $250 million investment by Dutch businesses in Nigeria. “Different sectors of the economy, especially telecoms, manufacturing, solid minerals, oil and gas, e-commerce, and fintech, are attracting new Foreign Direct Investments from discerning investors who know Nigeria is a good market for bountiful returns.
“We found it strange that Alhaji Atiku could accuse President Tinubu of conflict of interest in the award of Lagos-Calabar coastal highway to Hitech Construction Company, which he claimed is owned by Chagoury family because the president’s son, Seyi Tinubu, sits on the board of CDK, a tiles manufacturing company, based in Sagamu, Ogun State.
“Nigerians should, by now, be well accustomed to Atiku’s hypocrisy on many national issues. Is it not amusing that the former vice president, a man who openly said he formed Intels Nigeria with an Italian businessman when he was serving in the Nigeria Customs Service, a clear breach of extant public service regulations, is now the one accusing someone else of conflict of interest?
“When he was vice president of Nigeria from 1999-2007, he maintained his business links with Intels that won major port concession deals.
“Was this not an abuse of office, a flagrant violation of his oath, that a company where he was a co-owner won major government contracts and concessions when he was vice president?
“As Chairman of the National Council on Privatisation, he approved sales of over 145 state-owned enterprises to his known friends and associates and openly said during his failed campaign for the presidency last year that he would do the same, if elected. “It is important to state clearly that Seyi Tinubu is a 38-year-old adult who has a right to do business and pursue his business interests in Nigeria and anywhere in the world within the limits of the law.
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The fact that his father is now the president of Nigeria does not disqualify Seyi from pursuing legitimate business interests.
“For the records, Seyi joined the Board of Directors of CDK in 2018, more than six years ago. He is representing the interest of an investor company, in which he has interest.
He is not a board member because his father is a friend of the Chagourys. Information about owners and shareholders of CDK is a matter of public record that can be openly accessed from the website of the Corporate Affairs Commission and CDK’s. Atiku and his proxy did not need a little-known journal to recycle open-source information to make a fallacious argument. The Chairman of CDK and the highest shareholder of the company is respected General TY Danjuma (rtd). The Chagourys are minority shareholders in the company, and only one member of the clan is on its five-man board.
“We wonder how Seyi’s membership of the board of CDK conflicts with Hitech Construction Company’s work on Lagos-Calabar coastal superhighway”, the presidency said.
“Alhaji Atiku has been waging an unrelenting war against this all-important and transformative project for no justifiable reasons other than bad politics. Atiku knows that its grand success and other projects to be unfurled, such as the Badagry-Sokoto superhighway, will be a major boost for President Tinubu and finally upend his perennial presidential ambition.” He continued.
