Politics
Atiku Abubakar: The ‘Corrupt’ Customs Officer
It is no news that former Vice-president Atiku Abubakar is a man of affluence, in fact, he’s so rich that he has contested for president a record 6 times and in all but one occasion outspent every other candidate. However, very little is known about the Waziri Adamawa’s real source of wealth going by the fact that he was just a civil-servant prior to his involvement in business and politics.

Atiku Abubakar started his career as a customs officer where he served for 20 years, rising to the second highest position of Deputy Director (DD), before resigning in 1989. According to Atiku’s biography, he had set a target to become the director of the customs service by the time he turned 40 years. Unfortunately, this vision didn’t come to fruition and he would spend 3 more years in the agency after his 40th birthday, lobbying for the top job through all his political machineries within and outside the para-military agency. He wanted to be the agency’s huncho so bad that he allegedly wrote military president General Ibrahim Banbangida, an ‘old friend’, to endorse and approve him as the agency’s chief executive, a request that was well received and obliged, however, the process would turn left as a coalition from his home state of Gongola (now Adamawa & Taraba states) got wind of his impending appointment and in a quick turn of events, had the provisional appointment rescinded. The coalition’s argument was that the state already had very prominent members in the president’s cabinet. At this time, the Inspector-General of Police and Chief of Air staff were from Atiku’s home state and the erstwhile Vice-admiral Murtala Nyako of the Nigeria Navy, also from the same state, was already annointed for to become the Chief of Naval Staff by his people in Gongola and his colleagues within the presidency and Supreme Military Council. Automatically, Atiku’s emergence as the Director of Customs would have made Nyako’s dream futile. Nyako went on to become the chief of Naval staff, he would later join politics after his retirement where he would win two terms as governor of Adamawa state.
Atiku was the deputy director in charge of the most lucrative arm of the agency; enforcement & drugs department, it was a goldmine for corrupt customs officers. For many years, Atiku would use his position to exploit the agency’s loopholes and in the process enrich himself so much that he was seen as the most powerful and influential officer in the agency, even more powerful than the director of the agency. He accrued so much wealth that he was already a multi-millionaire in his mid-30’s, with investments in oil & gas, oil servicing, real estate, commodities trading, and farming. The source of funding for these many business interests wasn’t a puzzle, it was a well known fact that the agency was one of the most corrupt institutions in the country at the time, so it was normal for customs officers to live extravagant and lavish lifestyles. Atiku taking full advantage of his top position, milked not only the importers, but allegedly received outrageous sums in bribes by drug pedllers, and diverted sizeable sums of money from the agency’s coffers as his department was statutorily mandated to enforce the agency’s laws on drugs. Impounded drugs and other items found their way back into the markets and streets under the supervision of Atiku’s lieutenants, they lived a life of opulence, far above what their salaries could afford. Atiku’s influence was so much that he wasn’t sanctioned for his many multi-million Naira businesses which was against the code of conduct for government workers as civil servants weren’t allowed to run businesses apart from farming or agro-allied businesses.
The circumstances surrounding his sudden resignation from the very ‘lucrative’ position he occupied at the time raised a lot of dust, while some insiders alleged that he resigned due to frustrations of not becoming the agency’s no.1 man and the seeming betrayal by the people he trusted to land him the job, other sources believe that the events that saw one of the agency’s most senior officer step down on 30th April 1989 was due to corruption allegations leveled against him which almost got him fired, but due to his friendship with the then Head-of-State General Ibrahim Babangida, he was permitted to have an honorable discharge via a formal resignation which he submitted while on pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Atiku would go on to contest and win the Adamawa state’s gubernatorial elections in 1998 but would abandon it to join Olusegun Obasanjo of PDP as his running mate in the presidential election of 1999 which they won, subsequently becoming the second democratically elected vice-president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, he is currently contesting to become the 6th democratically elected president of Nigeria in the general elections of 25th February 2023 under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a party he abandoned to contest for president in 2007, and campaigned against in 2015 as a member of the All Progressive Congress (APC).
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2 BIRDS OF A FEATHER: HOW APC & PDP FEASTED ON LP VOTES
The 2023 Presidential Election has been themed the ‘worst election in the history of Nigeria’ by most Nigerians & observers from across the globe.

Prof Mahmood Yakubu declared Tinubu president-elect amidst controversial circumstances
Many weeks have passed since Prof Mahmood Yakubu controversially announced the APC candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the polls and subsequently returned as the president-elect, but Nigerians won’t let this slide as a resolve has been made by the country’s very youthful population to restore the mandate which majority of them opine is rightfully the LP presidential candidate, Peter Obi’s.
As the ruling party, it was only normal that APC was fingered as the ‘usual suspect’, their corrupt counterparts, PDP has however managed to stay out of the spotlight, leaving APC to face the wrath and backlash of angry Nigerians alone. However, Reportera News investigative reports has revealed that not only APC rigged in the 2023 presidential election, but their longtime opposition, PDP. Peter Obi’s LP who banked on INEC’s promise on delivering a free & fair poll were the victim of Prof Mahmood & INEC’s gross ineptitude.
Whilst APC focused their nefarious activities in remote areas in the North West and South West regions of the country, PDP focused on the South South and the North East, to ‘harvest’ LP votes, primarily. Studies have indicated that Peter Obi’s LP won Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, & Taraba; 3 PDP states, but were unfortunately rigged out of the polls, giving PDP controversial victories in the states. The electoral heist also saw the transfer of LP votes to APC in Benue, Plateau, and Rivers. Nigerians have called for the arrest and criminal prosecution of INEC chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu for electoral, LP has also petitioned the judiciary seeking the annulment of the election by the Court of Appeal which is set to begin trial on 30th May 2023.
This is a developing Story, subscribe to our newsletter to read new episodes of our series; ‘2023 election Audit’.
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Exposed: INEC Didn’t Have To Wipe BVA Data For ‘Storage Space’

INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu
The 2023 presidential election may have come and gone to some people, it however left a bitter taste in the mouths of most Nigerians who came out in their numbers to vote for their future only for the election results to be systemically rigged in favour of the ruling party, APC. To many, this is a nightmare that they’re hoping they’d wake up from, but to INEC it’s a bone they can’t spit nor swallow; this is because the manner with which the election was rigged is what experts call ‘lazy rigging’ due to the fact that they left far too many loopholes, subsequently leaving a trail of evidence to the public of the travesty disguised as election that occured on February 25th 2023.
This has left INEC in between crossroads as they are torn in the middle of defending the poorly conducted heist or admitting that the poll was flawed. The electoral body has however refused to lean towards the latter, arguing vehemently that they conducted a free & fair election, this obviously is a blatant lie based on the response of Nigerians who mostly feel that the results were rigged.
INEC has been dragged to court by the two main opposition parties, LP and PDP, however it is only the former who actually has a strong grip on their case since evidence has also shown that the latter committed the same electoral fraud that they accuse the ruling party, APC of.

Ekemp M8, the BVA used by INEC
BVA ‘Wahala’
One of the first requests of LP to the court was to have them inspect the BVAs to ensure that the INEC-published-results corresponded with the data available on the devices. However, INEC made a bogus claim that they had to wipe the presidential election results data to make storage space for the gubernatorial polls which happened almost a month after the presidential polls.
The Labour Party led by it’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi which on account of most Nigerians won the election are the major victims of this fraud have approached the courts to retrieve their stolen mandate, one which is expected to upheaval the status quo; in fact, many analysts have postulated that this trial is the biggest in the history of this nation.
In this article, Reportera News takes a deeper look at the device in question to determine if INEC’s claim could be substantiated and most importantly, proven to be truthful. Unfortunately, it isn’t; INEC lied inconspicuously and as a matter of fact, our investigation revealed that the device could handle upto 50 more elections of the same magnitude without needing to erase the data.
Discoveries:
The model of the BVA devices used by INEC is an ‘Ekemp M8’, it’s a biometric tablet with a processor speed of 1.3GHz manufactured by the global electronic powerhouse, Samsung. It comes with a 2 Gigabyte storage space with options that goes upto 8 Gigabytes. The simply interpretation of this information is that the device can accommodate data for 50 different elections without needing a ‘reconfiguration’. This ultimately begs the questions;
what is INEC hiding?
Why are they scared to hand over the BVAs for inspection of it’s content if they affirm that the election was conducted in a free and fair atmosphere?
The answer is simple; there is no correlation between the fraudulently announced results and the results in the BVAs, they just do not match, hence their decision to withhold the device and avert exposing the electoral fraud they committed.

Specs of the Ekemp M8
our IT experts looked at the specifications of this device and have come to a technical conclusion that it was ‘illogical’ to wipe the data since the election would have taken at most 2% of the storage capacity using the average Polling Unit to voters ratio which is 300 voters per polling unit.

According to most Nigerians and available evidence, Peter Obi of LP won the 2023 presidential election
As Nigerians stay focused on the judiciary hoping that the INEC results are annulled unequivocally, INEC and APC have deployed many machineries to consolidate the fraud they did, one of which was Lai Mohammed’s Washington DC trip where he went on international media organization at the behest of his paymasters to spread false information on the election, an action that has received heavy criticism from Nigerians who think that it was a waste of public funds as the announcement could have been made here in Nigeria, albeit faux news.
Verdict:
Our verdict is very clear, there is absolutely no reason for INEC to erase, transfer, or reconfigure the data on the BVA since there was more than enough storage space and most importantly, the BVAs were the subject of investigation for electoral fraud, hence not meant to be tampered with as this could affect the outcome of the case.
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Rivers: Nyesom Wike And Sim Fubara, Rivers State Governor-elect Fight Dirty

L-R Sim Fubara, Nyesom Wike
A head of May 29, 2023 inauguration, the outgoing governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike and his ‘political son’, and current Governor-elect of the state, Sim Fubara have fallen out, Reportera News has learned.
According to reports from Rivers State, the rift is as a result of disagreement between the duo on the Party’s (People’s Democratic Party) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
According to reports from Rivers State, the rift is as a result of disagreement between the duo on the Party’s (People’s Democratic Party) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

Nyesom Wike political godfather of Sim Fubara
A source told Reportera in Port Harcourt that Wike is fuming that Fubara invited Atiku and other PDP leaders considered to be his enemies to the May 29 inauguration at Portharcourt without his consent. The source said that when confronted, Fubara told his close aides that he wouldn’t want to inherit the enemies of the outgoing governor and wouldn’t want to start fighting political wars early in his administration.
He opted for reconciliation with the party leaders both at the state and national, which didn’t go down well with the Port Harcourt hit man. This has created a huge crack between the two and we were told that Wike is withholding release of funds for the inauguration. The political battle between Wike and Fubara will be interesting.
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