Posted by By Bolaji Adebiyi on
Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday denied owning shares in Globacom Nigeria Limited and challenged the Economic and Finan-cial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to publish the company's profile in order to reveal its shareholders.
Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday denied owning shares in Globacom Nigeria Limited and challenged the Economic and Finan-cial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to publish the company's profile in order to reveal its shareholders.
Speaking through his Media Consultant, Mallam Garba Shehu, yesterday, he said a media report credited to the EFCC that he owned 12.5% of the shares in the telecommunications company was false and warned that unless the commission proved its claim, his lawyers had been instructed to clear his name in court.
THISDAY had reported exclusively yesterday that the EFCC might have recommended forfeiture of 36% of Globacom's shares to the Federal Government. Of the shares, 24% is believed to be owned by former military President Ibrahim Babangida, through his son, Mohammed, while the remaining shares are alleged to belong to Atiku through a proxy.
But the Vice President's spokesman told THISDAY yesterday that the EFCC's claim was a barefaced lie concocted in line with its unrelenting search for tar to smear his boss.
'It is a shameless lie because the Vice President has no shares at all in either Globacom or any other telecoms company. Telecom-munications is not his line of business, and anybody looking that way to find something to nail him is wasting his time," Shehu said firmly.
He said the search in Globacom was part of the effort by the Federal Government to use the commission to rubbish Atiku in order to truncate his presidential ambition, which he said had remained on a sure course despite attempts to derail it.
'They will find nothing," he said, adding that the EFCC and its sponsors were labouring in vain.
He said the Vice President had expressed serious concern about 'the hostility of the commission towards him without justification," and had subsequently asked his lawyers to look at the 'wild claim" of the EFCC with a toothcomb with a view to challenging it in court.
Shehu said: 'The lawyers will proceed to court as soon as they put all the papers together.
'This because the Vice President is concerned about the careless manner in which names of decent people are being dragged into the mud by people who want to make newspaper headlines."