BY AHMED AKANBI
The Presidency has accused former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, of hiring a Washington-based lobbying firm for $1.2 million to run a media campaign aimed at influencing Nigeria’s 2027 general elections.
In a statement on Tuesday, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Public Communications, Dr Sunday Dare, described the move as a “clinical demonstration of desperation.”
Dare said publicly verifiable filings under the United States Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA, show Atiku contracted Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C. on a 12-month, $1.2 million retainer.
According to the Presidency, the scope of the agreement was to “counterbalance” narratives of the Nigerian government and “weaponize historical, legally resolved judicial archives” for domestic political leverage ahead of 2027.
The statement named Dr Karl-Marx Edward Okeke-Von Batten, founder of the firm, as the person behind recent press releases linking President Bola Tinubu to U.S. legal proceedings.
The Presidency described Okeke-Von Batten as “a commercial lobbyist” and “gun-for-hire” whose comments represent only Atiku-linked political interests and not the position of the US government or President Donald Trump.
”Speculations that he operates as a gun-for-hire whose professional survival depends entirely on generating manufactured controversies for foreign principals who pay for volume and sensationalism are rife,” the statement read.
The Presidency stated there is “absolutely no connection” between Tinubu’s current European trip, described as a previously scheduled annual leave, and ongoing US FOIA proceedings seeking archival records.
Citing legal analyst, Wole Afolabi (SAN), the statement noted that US authorities withhold certain sections of documents to protect investigative processes, and not to shield any individual.
It added that if Tinubu had been criminally liable under US law, American authorities “would have indicted and prosecuted him at the time.”
The Presidency accused the opposition of lacking a “coherent domestic agenda” and of investing in “foreign mouthpieces to manufacture fictitious crises” instead of grassroots development.
”The opposition’s 2027 framework remains devoid of noble economic blueprints, structural innovation, or issue-based engagement,” Dare said.
He added that Tinubu’s administration remains focused on “fiscal discipline, infrastructural consolidation, and institutional security reforms.”
”True democratic validation is earned through the ballot box and tangible service delivery to the citizens at home, not through manufactured headlines bought and paid for in foreign currency,” he concluded.