Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has criticized the presidency for invoking China’s legal system in defending President Bola Tinubu, arguing the comparison instead drew more attention to unresolved questions about the president’s past.

Atiku, the African Democratic Congress presidential candidate for 2027, said the presidency’s reference to China backfired given the country’s strict laws on drug offences and public accountability, noting that the most serious drug trafficking offences there carry the death penalty. In a statement from his aide Phrank Shaibu, Atiku maintained he has never been indicted or convicted of any criminal offence in Nigeria or elsewhere, and argued that if China is to be used as a benchmark for accountability, the same standard should be applied to a past case involving 460,000 dollars forfeited to the United States government in a civil proceeding linked to allegations of narcotics trafficking and money laundering.

Atiku also extended the comparison to broader governance issues, arguing that under China’s system, allegations of budget irregularities and the establishment of a disputed federal agency would have attracted swift official action, and criticized the presidency for presenting a routine US diplomatic response as evidence that the president had been cleared of wrongdoing, saying such correspondence carries no legal weight. He urged the administration to focus on addressing the country’s economic and security challenges rather than political point scoring.