Michael Achimugu speaking in an interview on Wednesday 25th January 2023 said he exposed the corruption allegation against the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar in order to prevent Nigerians from what he described as a great mistake of voting for the PDP flag bearer. Achimugu explained that he was motivated to take on his former boss because he wanted to educate Nigerians and dissuade them from voting for Atiku as president.
He said, “There are basically two reasons which I have repeated over and over on social media. First is that young persons like myself who served politicians will never again be taken for granted. Second, it is to warn Nigerians and educate them before the elections to prevent them from making the greatest mistake ever.
“If Nigerians think that they have seen corruption before, let them wait until they make the mistake of voting the Atiku family into office.
“After a couple of years, I began to see so many other things within the family. There is this huge dysfunction that doesn’t speak well of the family. It lies behind the façade that people cannot really see, but I am a Nigerian; I have children and so do millions of other Nigerians and I understand that if this is allowed to fester, if this is promoted to Aso Rock, then the entire Nigeria will be shattered, so I decided to come out and try and prevent this from happening.”
Achimugu claimed that he carried out many assignments for his former boss which he could not divulge publicly.
Recall that Atiku had admitted in a recorded phone call that he was involved in taking advantage of federal contracting expenditures.
Atiku, in the viral audio shared by his alleged former aide, narrated how he took charge of setting up onshore shell businesses which served as a conduit for siphoning significant sums from public works contracts for himself and former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The PDP presidential candidate said, “You see, what happened was when we came into the office, I advised the president against open corruption. I told him ‘Give me three people you trust and I will prepare three companies for which they will be the subscribers or rather the directors.’
Reacting to the allegation, the spokesperson for the Atiku Abubakar/Ifeanyi Okowa Presidential Campaign Council, Dino Melaye, in an interview last week on Channels Television denied that Achimugu was a media aide to Atiku.
Melaya added that he was being sponsored by the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress, Bola Tinubu, to distract Nigerians.
