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& Taraba states) got wind of his impending appointment and in a quick turn of events, had the provisional appointment rescinded.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 anointed 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 peddlers, 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).