Following reports that former vice president,Atiku Abubakar has his face
printed on bags of rice from his factory, his media office says it is
fake.
We’ve seen this flying around. It’s fake. Possibly photoshop. @Atiku
owns a feed factory, employing hundreds, not rice..they wrote in a
retweeted post by Atiku.
Atiku Abubakar (GCON) (born 25 November 1946) is a Nigerian politician, businessman and philanthropist, who served as the second elected Vice-President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007, on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), with President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Abubakar worked in the Nigeria Customs Service for twenty years,
rising to become the Deputy Director, as the second highest position in
the Service was then known. He retired in April 1989 and took up
full-time business and politics.
He ran for the office of governor in
the Gongola State (now Adamawa and Taraba States) in 1991, and for the Presidency in 1993, placing third after MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries.
In 1998 he was elected Governor of Adamawa State. While still
Governor-Elect he was selected by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
Presidential candidate Olusegun Obasanjo as his running mate. The duo
went on to win elections in February 1999, and Abubakar was sworn-in as
Nigeria’s second democratically elected vice president on 29 May 1999.
Abubakar’s second term as Vice President was marked by a stormy
relationship with President Obasanjo. His bid to succeed Obasanjo did
not receive the latter’s support, and it took a judgment of the Supreme
Court to allow Abubakar contest after he was initially disqualified by
the Independent National Electoral Commission
on the grounds that he had been indicted for financial misconduct by an
investigating panel set up at Obasanjo’s behest.
The Supreme Court
ordered the electoral commission to restore Abubakar’s name onto the
presidential ballot. Abubakar ran on the platform of the Action Congress, having quit the PDP on account of his issues with President Obasanjo. Atiku lost the election, placing third after Umaru Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).
Atiku is a co-founder of Intels, an oil servicing business with
extensive operations in Nigeria and abroad. He is also the founder of
Adama Beverages Limited, and the American University of Nigeria (AUN), both in Yola.