ATIKU?S MANSION AND THE WAR AGAINST CORRUPTION

 

 

By Jonathan Elendu and Omoyele Sowore

 

Nigeria's Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, is a man that is rarely seen or heard, infact you could correctly describe him as taciturn. His public persona is that of a man of few words. The last time we heard from him was a few weeks after the sack of former Education Minister, Fabian Osuji.

 

The disgraced Minister had insinuated that his travails might be because some people thought he was too close to the Vice President. Uncharacteristically, the Vice President made a public statement declaring full support for the "Anti-Corruption crusade" of his boss, hence endorsing Obasanjo's actions against Prof. Osuji and distancing himself from the embattled professor.

In "Strategies for the 2007 Presidential Election in Nigeria," an article published last week by Elendureports.com, it was suggested that the Vice President's reluctance to join the race for the
Presidency in 2007 might be because of disagreements between him and Pres. Obasanjo arising from some perceived corrupt practices on the part of the Vice President, it has been widely rumoured that Obasanjo's privatisation policy mostly benefited the Vice President and his cronies.

Conventional wisdom suggests that Atiku Abubakar, as the incumbent Vice President would be the front-runner in the race to succeed his boss. One would have expected him to trumpet the only program of the Obasanjo Administration, which has fooled a majority of Nigerians:
The Anti-Corruption crusade. Some well informed people in Abuja have suggested that the Vice
President should be one of the people being hounded by EFCC and Nuhu Ribadu but the President could not touch him because they are both playing off of each other, Obasanjo was the person who gave Atiku the headship of the privatization process and it was him who broke
the ground to launch his multi-million dollar American styled University (ABTI) in Yola, Adamawa State, they both own private universities.

Our investigations reveal that Vice President Atiku Abubakar might have broken the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on December 1, 2000. This is one and a half years after becoming the Vice President of Nigeria. On that day he bought a mansion in POTOMAC, Maryland for one million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($1,750,000). The house, a two storey building was constructed in 1988. The land area is about 2.3 acres.  Today, that house is valued
at over two million dollars ($2 million). POTOMAC, Maryland is America's 12th richest neighbourhood. The house was purchased in the name of one Jennifer E. Douglas, whose official occupation is a Home Making.
 
Jamilah Atiku Abubakar aka Jennifer Douglas E. aka Jennifer Douglas-Abubakar is the fourth wife of Vice President Atiku Abubakar. A former journalist and Ph.D. student at the American University in Washington, Mrs. Atiku is the Founder, President and CEO of GEDE Foundation, a non-profit organization based in the Washington DC area of the United States. A cursory glance of the donor list of the Foundation shows that many high net worth individuals and blue chip
companies that donated to the Obasanjo Library Project are all listed. While there are lots of anonymous donors, such individuals as Herbert Orji, Lucky Omoluwa, Cosmas Maduka, Jibril Aminu, Oba Otudeko, Abba Dabo, Musa Bello, and Akinwole Omoboriowo are on the
list of donors. The corporate donors include but not limited to: Chrome Oil Services, Coscharis Motors, MTEL, UBA Plc., Chevron Texaco, COJA 8th All Africa Games, Guardian Express Bank, Sea Petroleum and Gas, Goodworks International LLC., Coca Cola, Motorola Nig. Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Total Fina Elf, Rockview Oil Services, Stanhoe Ventures, Devon Energy, Zenith Bank, Riggs Bank, DynQuest, Capital Lending, Global Apex Air Ltd., Gucci, Virgin
Atlantic Airways, Saks Fifth Avenue, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany and Company, Doxa Digital, and many more. 

On the surface it may appear that the Vice President did nothing wrong as Jennifer Douglas E bought the said property in Maryland. While we cannot reliably confirm that VP Atiku and Jennifer were married as at then, we are reliably informed that there was a romantic relationship between them which eventually culminated in marriage and the Vice President uses the residence in POTOMAC as his official residence whenever he is in the US. A source that insists on remaining anonymous said, "Everybody knows Atiku paid for the house. Jennifer was pregnant with his child and there is no way she could afford a multimillion-dollar home. I challenge you to engage
forensic accountants to look into this. You will discover that I am telling the truth." Other independent sources confirmed to us that the house was paid for by Atiku Abubakar. Atiku and Jennifer are the owners of the American styled University in Yola (ABTI), capital of Adamawa, Atiku's home state. A critic of the Obasanjo-Atiku Administration  "after studying at the American University in Washington, the woman liked it so much that she and her husband
decided to set up one in Nigeria. Who knows, someday we'll have a President's wife who will get Harvard University set up in Nigeria as a birthday gift!"

In 2003, Ms. Jennifer E. Douglas donated twenty-five thousand dollars to Pres. Bush's party, the Republican National Committee. Two months earlier, Jennifer Douglas-Abubakar had donated one thousand dollars to Mikulski for Senate Committee. In 2004 Jennifer Douglas-Abubakar donated five hundred dollars to Van Hollen for Congress. Why did Jennifer Douglas make the donation of twenty-five thousand dollars to the Republican National Committee when two
months earlier Jennifer Douglas-Abubakar made the smaller donation of one thousand dollars?

The Vice President's wife, according to an analyst that we spoke with, "knows that it is unconscionable for her to donate twenty-five thousand dollars to the Republican Party when Nigerians are dying of hunger.

Therefore, she used a different name and for the smaller sums she used her real name or what we think her real name is?these are the same people fighting corruption? Give me a break," he snickered. 

Some Nigerians often wonder why Nigeria retains the unenviable position of the second most corrupt nation in the world despite all the attention the President's anti-corruption crusade is generating in the media. A few months ago, Chancellor Schroeder of Germany told
Obasanjo to put more energy in fighting corruption in Nigeria. Gov. Orji Kalu in an interview with Elendureports.com some months ago had unequivocally stated that Obasanjo's government is corrupt, he says, "Corruption is under Obasanjo's table". The President and his
Administration, it appears, are interested in fighting the corruption of their enemies rather than carrying out a proper assessment of themselves. Atiku Abubakar should address charges of
corruption that have been made against him. While the Nigerian media have refused to publish stories concerning the Vice President's alleged corrupt practices, the stories have refused to fade away. 

We emailed the Vice President's wife and made two telephone calls to her offices. Although we were told that Mrs. Atiku got our messages, she did not return our calls or respond to the email.