TheCable

Atiku Abubakar, former vice-president, has denied collecting the bio-data of Nigerians to distribute money as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Paul Ibe, spokesman to Abubakar, said a notice in circulation asking citizens to provide such data for such should be disregarded.

Ibe said the notice was put up by scammers to defraud Nigerians, and that the website being used for such — www.atikufoundation.online — is unknown to the former vice-president.

“We wish to bring to the attention of Nigerians that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is not connected to a certain notice circulating on social media directing unsuspecting members of the public to a link,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

“We thus state categorically that any such link asking for the bio-data of Nigerians as beneficiaries of monetary handout is FAKE.

“This is obviously a SCAM, an attempt to fleece and defraud Nigerians by, perhaps, collecting their vital bio-data for a nefarious  objective orchestrated by masterminds  of the advertisement on social media.

“As a patriotic and law abiding citizen, the Waziri Adamawa had pledged his modest public donation to the Federal Government through the Priam Group to support government’s effort in fighting the spread of Coronavirus in Nigeria and in providing succour to the most vulnerable of people amid the ravaging pandemic.”

Ibe asked security agencies to go after the “scammers” and bring them to book.