Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Saturday fired back at President Bola Tinubu, saying that the drug trafficking case linked to him in the United States would attract the death penalty in China.

In a statement issued through his spokesperson, Phrank Shuaibu, Mr Abubakar responded to the Tinubu government’s claim that the former vice president would be languishing in jail for corruption if he were in China. 

“It takes a peculiar kind of unintelligence for a spokesman to set out to drag an opponent before a hypothetical Chinese court, only to end up dragging his own principal into the dock. 

“Perhaps the spokesman did not realise that the maximum penalty under Chinese law for the most serious drug trafficking offences is death. Having chosen China as his benchmark, he unwittingly invited Nigerians to examine the very standard he thought would embarrass Atiku Abubakar,” Mr Shuaibu said. 

“The facts are neither complicated nor disputable. Atiku Abubakar has never been indicted or convicted by any court in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world for corruption, narcotics offences or, indeed, any criminal offence whatsoever. That is an incontrovertible matter of public record. 

“If, however, the presidency insists that China is now the standard by which public accountability should be measured, Nigerians are equally entitled to ask what the Chinese authorities would have done in a case involving $460,000 forfeited to the United States government in a civil forfeiture proceeding concerning funds alleged to be connected to narcotics trafficking and money laundering,” he added.

He noted that China is renowned for its uncompromising approach to narcotics-related offences and public accountability, adding that Mr Tinubu could have been subjected to capital punishment if his drug trafficking case was in China. 

Mr Shuaibu said, “It is not a jurisdiction where the forfeiture of suspicious proceeds ordinarily marks the end of official scrutiny. More often than not, that is where scrutiny begins. And since the Presidency has elected to make China the reference point, let us go a step further. The Tinubu administration should acquaint itself with the Chinese criminal justice system’s uncompromising treatment of corruption, abuse of public office and the misappropriation of state resources.  

“Not in China would a president sign into law a national budget immersed in scandals, padding and duplicitous appropriations. Not in China would a President look the other way while a senior presidential aide faces grave allegations of creating a fake government agency. Not in China would a government campaign on Renewed Hope only to deliver renewed hardship to its citizens. These are precisely the reasons the Presidency should have been more circumspect before invoking China.”

Mr Shuaibu stated that the presidency’s argument had collapsed under the weight of its own contradiction.

He added that by invoking China, the presidency unwittingly invited Nigerians to apply the very standard he thought would embarrass Mr Abubakar. 

Mr Abubakar’s statement comes as a response to a statement by the presidency, berating him as a corrupt former vice president who would have been jailed for bribery and corruption if Nigeria were China.

Bayo Onanuga, spokesperson for Mr Tinubu, had in a statement said Mr Abubakar lacked the moral rectitude to report Mr Tinubu’s forfeiture of money in a cocaine trafficking case to the U.S. government.

“Atiku, along with his former wife, Jennifer Douglas, was one of the subjects of an elaborate US Senate investigation, “Keeping Foreign Corruption Out of the United States: Four Case Histories”.

“The report of the investigation, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, was released in February 2010. It documented how Atiku used offshore companies to bring suspect funds, including bribes from multinationals, running into millions of dollars, into the United States,” the presidency said.

Mr Onanuga added that “A man with such a dismal record as a public servant certainly has no business asking for our votes. Indeed, if Atiku Abubakar were a Chinese, he would be rotting away in jail for his crimes against the Nigerian people.”