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The recent arrival of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar on America soil has in no small measure raised the dust of speculations about what made it possible for the People’s Democratic Party, PDP Presidential candidate to gain entry into the country all of a sudden after 12 years.
On the heels of this development, the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) has come up with two different reasons to explain the sudden arrival of Atiku in America. The first reason advanced by the group immediately the news of Atiku arrival broke in the media was that the Presidential hopeful got the Visa through the influence of Senate President Saraki.
However, yesterday, Friday January 18th 2019, BMO told of how specially recruited and heavily paid American lobbyists facilitated the US trip of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate.
But it said the trip would not remove the fact that Atiku was indicted by a congressional report that named him in a money laundering case.
According to a statement by the Chairman and Secretary of the group while debunking its earlier allegation of Saraki’s aid, the former Vice President’s eventual entry into the country after a 12-year travel ban cannot negate the US Congressional report that named him in one of four notorious cases of money laundering in the world.
In their words: “The2010 report titled ‘Keeping foreign corruption out of the US’ clearly linked the convicted American Congressman Williams Jefferson to Atiku Abubakar who was described as ‘a high-ranking official in Nigeria’s executive branch who had a spouse in Potomac, Maryland’ in a bribery scheme meant to influence business contracts with African countries.”
“It also noted that Atiku’s fourth wife Jennifer Douglas Abubakar helped her husband bring over $40m in suspect funds into the US including at least $1.7m in bribe payments from Siemens AG, a German corporation, and over $38m from little known offshore corporations.”
The group also alleged that the meeting between Atiku and US government officials might not be far from a clandestine collision to promote the ‘America first’ mantra by Donald Trump to severe Nigeria’s ties with China.
“It is a fact that the US President Donald Trump with his ‘America First’ mantra has not been too comfortable with Africa’s booming relations with China with Nigeria as arrowhead and may be willing to do business with anyone that will boost his country’s interest even to the detriment of their own country.”
“The world has seen how Trump had been reluctant to take a hard-line stance against Saudi Arabia over ‘Kashoggi murder’ because of his close business link with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman”, The statement.
The group said it was not surprised by the visit as it had revealed in November last year that the PDP and its Presidential candidate had secured the services of Brian Ballard, a US lobbyist with close links to President Donald Trump, to facilitate the entry visa for millions of dollars.
