The presidency has rubbished former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar for paying $1.2 million to Washington lobbyist Karl-Marx Edward Okeke-Von Batten to cast aspersions on President Bola Tinubu.

Sunday Dare, spokesperson for Mr Tinubu, in a statement on Tuesday, said, “Okeke-Von Batten must have conned a desperate Alhaji Abubakar Atiku into believing that he has access to everyone in the Trump administration, including President Trump himself, by falsely representing that he had reached out to President Trump to release the so-called FBI files.”

According to the presidential spokesperson, the theatrical dispatches issued by Mr Okeke-Von Batten—a commercial lobbyist operating under a lavish, multi-million-dollar retainer funded by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar—expose the intellectual and political bankruptcy of an Atiku-led opposition desperately seeking foreign validation for local irrelevance.

He added, “The Nigerian connection is exposed directly from the names found on the lobby documents. The incendiary press releases being carefully churned out from Washington are public relations propaganda sheets passed off as the view of the U.S. government. They are not.”

Mr Dare claimed the Washington-based lobbying firm conned Mr Abubakar by churning out politically motivated press releases without concrete evidence.

“It is nothing more than political speculation packaged as classified information. We demand that they produce the so-called ‘highly classified intelligence report’, identify their unnamed sources, and provide tangible evidence for their wild allegations.

“To evaluate these claims with legal rigour and logical integrity requires examining the architecture of this political stunt. Publicly verifiable United States Department of Justice FARA filings confirm that Atiku Abubakar contracted the Washington-based firm Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C. on a lucrative $1.2 million, 12-month retainer,” Mr Dare said.

He added, “The explicit scope of this agreement is not to offer objective governance advisory, but to execute a targeted, partisan campaign designed to ‘counterbalance’ Nigerian government narratives and weaponise historical, legally resolved judicial archives for domestic political leverage ahead of the 2027 general elections. Okeke-Von Batten must have conned a desperate Alhaji Abubakar Atiku into believing that he has access to everyone in the Trump administration, including President Trump himself, by falsely representing that he had reached out to President Trump to release the so-called FBI files.”

Mr Abubakar’s media team has been contacted for comments.