The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, has assured Nigerians that under no circumstance will he mortgage the mandate they freely expressed on February 23, 2019 during the presidential and National Assembly elections.
This assurance comes against the backdrop of the invasion of the house and arrest of Alhaji Babalele Abdullahi, his son-in-law and Director of Finance of his group of companies, in Abuja on Saturday.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission at about 8:30am on Saturday invaded the Maitama residence of Babalele.
They were however not given access into the house until his lawyers arrived.
A statement by the head of the Atiku Media Team, Mazi Paul Ibe, said the EFCC agents, numbering about two dozen, came in two regular vehicles, an 18-seater Toyota bus (registration Abuja CS 522 RSH) and a hilux van.
Ive said: “They came with a search warrant to search the house and office of Babalele but found nothing incriminating.
“However, they took away some documents of landed property.
“Not done, the EFCC officials stormed his Wuse residence where they again found nothing incriminating after the search.”
Ibe said despite not finding anything incriminating, the operatives afterwards took away Babalele to the EFCC office in Wuse to make a statement alongside Lawan Ayuba.
He added in the statement: “It was gathered that the petition relied upon to invade the residence and office of Babalele was authored by a brother of the wife (Aisha Buhari) of President (Muhammadu) Buhari.
“As a law abiding citizen, Atiku Abubakar recognizes the constitutional role of the EFCC and indeed any other agency of the government to carry out investigations, but will not be cowed by any attempt to blackmail him into mortgaging his mandate.”
