Atiku Abubakar, presidential
candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has finally been issued a visa
to the United States.
A family source disclosed this on
Saturday and confirmed that the former vice-president has left Nigeria for the
UK, where he will spend some time before flying to the US.
TheCable reports that former
president Olusegun Obasanjo played a “critical” role in getting the American
government to issue the visa to his former deputy with whom he was estranged
for almost 15 years.
The trip marks another chapter in
the controversy that has rocked the former vice-president for over a decade.
Atiku, who is widely travelled,
has not been to the US in 13 years, intially fueling speculations that he might
be avoiding possible arrest or prosecution.
His political opponents had used
his absence from the US not just to taunt but to discredit him.
His row with the US authorities
began after the FBI investigated a bribery scandal involving William Jefferson,
former US congressman, in 2004.
Atiku was accused of demanding a
bribe of $500,000 to facilitate the award of contracts to two American
telecommunication firms in Nigeria.
The FBI had searched his
residence in the posh neighbourhood of Potomac, Maryland, but no money was
found.
The investigators had videotaped
Jefferson, who was the congressman representing Louisiana, receiving $100,000
worth of $100 bills which he claimed was meant for Atiku, but the former
vice-president has consistently denied the allegation.
Despite Atiku’s claim to
innocence, the controversy raged.
Two months before he declared
interest in the 2019 presidential race, Atiku granted an interview to Dele
Mommodu, celebrity journalist, where he clarified his absence from the US.
“It is the sole prerogative of
America to determine who they want in their country or not,” he said.
“I’m not running away from
America. I applied but wasn’t issued a visa.”
He said the US did not
categorically deny him visa.
“They’ve only said my application
is going through administrative process,” he said.
On Thursday, Lai Mohammed,
minister of information, had warned the US to be cautious in granting visa to
the main opponent of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
Asked to comment on Atiku’s visa
status on Friday, Rusell Brooks, spokesman of the US consulate in Lagos, had
said issuance of visa to Nigerians irrespective of their status is strictly a
confidential matter.
He said the US government would
not discuss such confidentiality in public.
Some All Progressives Congress
(APC) members had alleged that Brian Ballard, publicist of US President Donald
Trump, was working towards relaxing the visa ban on Atiku.
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