Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the PDP candidate, stormed the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja on Thursday to observe hearings in the lawsuit he filed to contest the results of the 2023 presidential election.
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, was declared the winner of the presidential election, but Atiku and his party are contesting that decision.
Among other things, he is requesting that the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, revoke the Certificate of Return that was given to Tinubu.
The petition's pre-hearing session was to proceed before the five-person panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani.
Atiku entered the courtroom at 8:35 a.m. with his friends and well-wishers, including Senator Dino Melaye, the PDP candidate for the upcoming governorship in Kogi State. Atiku had since submitted an application for live coverage of daily proceedings on his petition.
Atiku Abubakar GCON, a politician and businessman from Nigeria, was Olusegun Obasanjo's vice president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007. He was born on November 25, 1946.Before serving as Obasanjo's running partner in the 1999 presidential election and winning re-election in 2003, he ran for governor of Adamawa State in 1990, 1996, and 1998, when he was eventually elected.
There were six unsuccessful presidential campaigns by Atiku Abubakar: in 1993, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023. In 1993, he campaigned for president of the Social Democratic Party but was defeated by Baba Gana Kingibe and Moshood Abiola. In the 2007 presidential election, he ran for president on the Action Congress's ticket and finished third behind Umaru Yar'Adua of Muhammadu Buhari of the ANPP and the PDP. During the 2011 presidential election, he ran in the People's Democratic Party's presidential primaries but lost to incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. Prior to the 2015 presidential election, he joined the All Progressives Congress in 2014. He ran in the presidential primaries but lost to Muhammadu Buhari. He rejoined the PDP in 2017 and ran as the party's presidential candidate in the 2019 election, losing to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari once more.
After defeating Nyesom Wike, the incumbent governor of Rivers State, in the primary election, he was selected as the Peoples Democratic Party's presidential nominee for the general election of 2023 in May 2022. Bola Tinubu defeated him in the general election, placing him in second place.
Family
Atiku Abubakar was born on November 25, 1946, in the town of Jada, which was then governed by the British Cameroons. After a vote in 1961, the territory joined the Federation of Nigeria. His mother was Aisha Kande, while his father Garba Abubakar was a Fulani merchant and farmer. He was given the name Atiku Abdulqadir in honor of his paternal grandfather, who is from Wurno, Sokoto State, and moved to the village of Kojoli in Jada, Adamawa State. Inuwa Dutse, who is his maternal grandfather, moved to Jada, Adamawa State from Dutse, Jigawa State. He became the only child of his parents when his only sister passed away infancy. His father drowned in 1957 while attempting to cross a river to the nearby town of Toungo. Jada.
Education
Atiku Abubakar's father hated the idea of a Western education and worked to keep him out of the conventional educational system. Abubakar's father was detained for a few days by the government while waiting for Aisha Kande's mother to pay the fine when it was revealed that he was skipping out on required schooling. Abubakar began attending the Jada Primary School in Adamawa when he was eight years old. He entered Adamawa Provincial Secondary School in 1960, the same year he finished primary school, together with 59 other pupils. After earning a grade three on the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, he completed secondary school in 1965.
Abubakar spent a brief period of time studying at the Nigeria Police College in Kaduna after finishing secondary school. Leaving the After a brief stint as a tax officer in the regional ministry of finance, where he was admitted to the School of Hygiene in Kano in 1966 after failing to submit an O-Level Mathematics result, he briefly attended college. He served as the interim student union president at the university and received a diploma in 1967. He received a grant from the local government and participated in the Ahmadu Bello University Institute of Administration's Law Diploma program in 1967. He worked for the Nigeria Customs Service after graduating in 1969 and throughout the Nigerian Civil War.
Abubakar earned his Master's degree in international relations from Anglia Ruskin University in 2021 and passed the program with honors.
Relationships and personal life
Abubakar has 28 kids total from his four spouses. In his own words, Atiku: "I wanted to grow the Abubakar family. As a child, I experienced severe loneliness. I lacked a sister and a brother. I did not want my kids to experience loneliness like I did. This is the reason I wed multiple wives. My wives are a perfect compliment to one another since they are my sisters, companions, and advisors.
He secretly wed Titilayo Albert in Lagos in 1971 despite her family's initial opposition. He had four children with her: Fatima, Adamu, Halima, and Aminu. He wed Ladi Yakubu, his second wife, in 1979. Abba, Atiku, Zainab, Ummi-Hauwa, Maryam, and Rukaiyatu are his six children with Ladi. In 1983, he
Princess Rukaiyatu, the daughter of Aliyu Mustafa, the Lamido of Adamawa, became his third bride. Aisha, Hadiza, Aliyu (named after her late father), Asmau, Mustapha, Laila, and Abdulsalam are her children. Ladi was eventually divorced by Abubakar, allowing him to take Jennifer Iwenjiora Douglas as his fourth wife—the most allowed by Islam. He wed Fatima Shettima, his fifth wife (although only his fourth legally, due to his previous divorce with Ladi), in 1986. Amina (Meena), Mohammed, the twins Zainab and Aisha, Ahmed and Shehu, and Hafsat are some of her children.[Reference needed]
In a statement to the media on February 1, 2022, Jennifer Douglas declared her separation from Abubakar final. She claims that their relationship ended because of conflicts.
Customs
Abubakar spent twenty years working for the Nigeria Customs Service, eventually getting to the post of Deputy Director, the second-highest position at the time. He retired in April 1989 and started working full-time in business and politics. As a young Customs Officer, he got his start in the real estate industry.
Actual estate
He asked for and was granted a loan of 31,000 naira in 1974 to build his first home in Yola, which he then rented out. He bought a second plot and built a second home using the rent money. He persisted in doing this, amassing a sizable portfolio of real estate in Yola, Nigeria. He entered agriculture in 1981, purchasing 2,500 hectares of land close to Yola to launch a farm.
cotton and corn farming. The company ran into financial trouble and shut down in 1986. He admitted failure in an April 2014 blog post, saying, "My first foray into agriculture, in the 1980s, ended in failure. After that, he started trading, purchasing and reselling truckloads of sugar, flour, and rice.[Reference needed]
Transportation
When Abubakar worked as a customs officer at the Apapa Ports, he made his most significant business decision. He was invited to establish Nigeria Container Services (NICOTES), a logistics business operating inside the Ports, by Italian businesswoman Gabrielle Volpi in Nigeria. Later on, NICOTES would change its name to Intels Nigeria Limited and bring Abubakar enormous money. Abubakar is one of the co-founders of Intels Nigeria Limited, a large-scale oil servicing company with activities both domestically and abroad. Other business of Atiku Interests are concentrated in Yola, Adamawa, and include the American University of Nigeria (AUN), the first private university in Sub-Saharan Africa built in the American model, the animal feed factory Adama Beverages Limited, and the beverage production facility. After retiring in April 1989, he returned to business and politics full-time.
participation in business
Since then, he has been the target of claims of conflict of interest due to his involvement in business while a federal officer with supervisory responsibilities. Abubakar has justified the choice on his end, claiming that his engagement was restricted to share ownership (which was permissible by government regulations) and that he was not involved in the day-to-day management of the company. His company, NICOTES, then changed its name to INTELS and went on to play a significant role in the allegations of money laundering made against Abubakar by the U.S. government during his vice presidential term.
First term as Vice President of Nigeria
Vice-President's seal.
Abubakar was sworn in as Nigeria's vice president on May 29, 1999. He co-supervised the sale of hundreds of loss-making and badly run governmental firms with Nasir El Rufai during his first term as Chairman of the National Economic Council and head of the National Council for Privatization.[Reference needed]
Two terms
Stormy relations between Abubakar and President Obasanjo characterized his second term as vice president. As a result of President Olusegun Obasanjo's purported attempt to modify key articles of the constitution in order to run for office again (Third Term Agenda), Abubakar and Obasanjo engaged in a bitter public feud in 2006.
Third term schedule
the argument Resulting from the unsuccessful constitutional amendment, a schism in the People's Democratic Party developed. Eventually, the National Assembly vetoed the modifications allowing Obasanjo to seek reelection. In order to prepare for the 2007 elections, Abubakar left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and joined the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in 2006 after developing a rift with President Olusegun Obasanjo