The Presidency on Saturday accused former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of failing to rejoice with the federal government several hours after the release of pupils and teachers who were abducted from schools in Oriire Local Government Area of Oyo State.
But Atiku who is the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) dismissed the Presidency’s claim, describing the allegation as a reckless distortion of facts that collapsed under the weight of documentary evidence.
Presidential spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, in a tweet on his verified X handle, @aonanuga1956, alleged that Atiku never deemed it fit to speak up and congratulate the government at the centre and security agencies several hours after the victims were rescued on Friday.
The presidential media aide in the tweet stated: “Almost 18 hours after the Oriire pupils and their teachers regained their freedom, Atiku Abubakar @atiku has not deemed it fit to rejoice with the Tinubu federal government, the security agencies and the traumatised victims.
“Previously, he weaponised the kidnap as a campaign issue several times since it happened 57 days ago. Now that the abductees are out, all is quiet on Atiku’s internet lane. No comment. No words of praise. Maybe, the veteran presidential runner is waiting for some bad news to attack Tinubu’s administration.
But in a swift reaction in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the ADC presidential candidate said there were “only two possible explanations for the Presidency’s latest outburst: either its media handlers were too lazy to acquaint themselves with publicly available facts before rushing to attack the opposition, or they were too embarrassed by the substance of his statement to acknowledge its existence.”
The statement quoted Atiku as saying, “It is astonishing that a Presidency with limitless public resources could accuse someone of silence without carrying out the most basic verification.
“Either they failed to read our statement because they were too lazy to do so, or they deliberately ignored it because it exposed uncomfortable truths about their misplaced priorities.”
Atiku insisted he had issued a comprehensive press statement earlier on Satirday, titled ‘A Nation at War Needs a Commander-in-Chief, Not a Campaigner-in-Chief’, in which he welcomed the rescue and commended the security agencies involved.
“What we declined to do was to applaud a Commander-in-Chief who, at a defining moment of national importance, remained publicly preoccupied with partisan political activities instead of personally leading the nation in celebrating the success of our troops and reassuring families whose loved ones remain in captivity,” he said.
The statement Atiku issued earlier had accused Tinubu of prioritising politics over national security.
He had noted that the rescue coincided with the launch of the All Progressives Congress’ door-to-door campaign ahead of the 2027 election, which he described as troubling.
“The politics of re-election should consume no serious government while innocent schoolchildren have remained in the custody of kidnappers for weeks,” he said, adding that “yesterday should have been dedicated to the war room, not the campaign room”, he had stated.
Atiku added that no amount of propaganda could erase the questions raised in his earlier statement, pointing to children still held in Borno State and elsewhere.
“The rescue of the Oyo schoolchildren brought joy to the nation, but Nigerians are still asking: When will the children abducted in Borno State and other innocent citizens across the country also regain their freedom? Those questions remain unanswered,” he said.
