TheCable

El-Rufai Fires Back

El-Rufai, who is now the governor of Kaduna state, would not allow this to go just like that. Never. He penned a response, personally signed it and threw it at the former vice-president.

He even gave it a title to make life easier for sub-editors: “Atiku haunted by his corruption demons.”

He first denied the Transcorp story, as vehemently as possible.

El-Rufai said: “I never had anything to do with the incorporation of Transcorp. Those that established that company and fronted it like Festus Odimegwu, Tony Elumelu, Otunba Lawal Solarin and Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke are still around and alive. As such I could not have and did not offer Alhaji Atiku any shares in Transcorp. I declined the shares that were offered to me. Having done that, how could I have offered anyone shares?

“In fact, I advised President Olusegun Obasanjo, Alhaji Atiku and then finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala not to accept the shares that were then being offered by the promoters of Transcorp. My counsel to them was based on the grounds that they would face conflicts of interest when Transcorp bids for privatization assets. At the time Alhaji Atiku and Ngozi were chair and vice-chair of the National council on Privatization, and were particularly directly involved in approving the sales of state-owned enterprises and assets.”

On the issue of the N50 million bribe allegedly paid to some senators to confirm el-Rufai’s ministerial nomination, Atiku had explained that the senators only benefited from PDP campaign funds, that he did not bribe them to confirm el-Rufai.

But el-Rufai told a different story in his book — and he repeated it in his rejoinder.

“It is too late in the day to try to pretend that the fiasco concerning the attempt by then Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Jonathan Zwingina to extort money from me for Senate clearance never happened. All Alhaji Atiku has just done is confirm that he paid the Senators, as I revealed in Page 139 of my book,” he said.

He then repeated the corruption allegations against Atiku.

“Can Alhaji Atiku explain the findings in the report of the United States Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations which detailed a pattern of wire transfers of more than USD 40m from offshore companies like Siemens into bank accounts controlled by him and one of his wives. The report detailing the US Senate findings is online, as one of four case histories of foreign corruption in the USA. Alhaji Atiku should tell a better tale of why he is avoiding America,” he said.

He listed other allegations against Atiku: the Ericsson manoeuvre, the Abuja water treatment plant contract, obsession with marabouts and their assurances of the political big prize; and the PTDF affair.