The Tape, the Company That Did Not Exist Yet, and the Job at the Aviation Authority

Of the four sections in the file against Atiku Abubakar, three are foreign. The Senate report is American. The Siemens complaint is American. The $14 million landed in Washington.

Only one is Nigerian, and it is the one with a voice on it.

8 January 2023

Michael Achimugu — described by Nigerian outlets as a former media aide to Atiku, a description Atiku’s campaign disputed at the time — posted a video on Sunday 8 January 2023 promising a series of disclosures about his former principal. P.M. News, reporting the video that day, summarised what Achimugu said Atiku had told him: that he “did not commit corruption directly, but by proxy, stealth or SPV.” Achimugu said he had sworn an affidavit of facts first, as protection: “which is one of the steps I have taken for possible backlash for the series of disclosures I will be making.”

The audio came with it. Achimugu put the recording on his YouTube channel and other social media pages that Sunday afternoon, and Peoples Gazette reported it the next morning. The Gazette described a single recording of roughly four minutes, said to have been made by Achimugu in June 2018 — four and a half years before he released it, and during Atiku’s run-up to the 2019 election rather than the 2023 one. According to the Gazette’s account, Achimugu said he had contacted Atiku for an explanation after claims circulated on social media that he had taken ₦100 million from Joshua Dariye, the former governor of Plateau State.

On the tape, a voice Achimugu says is Atiku’s describes advising Olusegun Obasanjo against open corruption and proposing an alternative:

“I told him to give me three people you trust and I will prepare three companies in which they will be subscribers or rather the directors.”Voice attributed to Atiku Abubakar, recording released 8 January 2023, as reported by Peoples Gazette

And then, obligingly, a definition:

“An SPV is a special-purpose vehicle. It is a company they incorporate to carry out certain activities.”Voice attributed to Atiku Abubakar, as reported by Peoples Gazette, 9 January 2023

And then the mechanism:

“So that if there is any contract that we give they will act like consultants and they are given a fee. That fee is what we use to fund the party.”Voice attributed to Atiku Abubakar, as reported by Peoples Gazette, 9 January 2023

Two men are named as the trusted associates: the businessman Otunba Oyewole Fasawe and the politician Andy Uba. A third is described on the tape but not named: a politician from Borno State who, the voice says, died in a plane crash. One company is named: Marine Float. Festus Keyamo later alleged in court that the accounts of two other, undisclosed companies had been used the same way; we could find no public record that they have ever been identified. Peoples Gazette reported that Fasawe was not available for comment and that Uba declined to comment.

The elegance of the scheme, if it is one, is worth pausing on. Nobody receives a bribe. A company you control is appointed consultant on a contract the government awards. The consultancy fee is legitimate on its face, invoiced, banked, and taxed. The principal’s name appears on nothing. And the proceeds are described not as personal enrichment but as party funding — which in Nigerian politics has always been the respectable word for the same thing.

The part that did not come from Achimugu

If the tape were all there is, this would be a shouting match between a disgruntled ex-employee and a presidential campaign, and you could stop reading.

It is not all there is. Marine Float shows up in a courtroom seven years earlier, in someone else’s trial, out of the mouth of an EFCC investigator giving evidence in open court.

On 25 January 2016, at the FCT High Court in Gudu, Abuja, before Justice Adebukola Banjoko, EFCC detective Musa Sunday was the first prosecution witness in the trial of Joshua Dariye, the former governor of Plateau State. He told the court that, on Dariye’s instructions, the bank holding the state’s ecological funds had paid out ₦100 million in the name of “PDP South-West”, and that the money had been traced:

“The N100m paid to the PDP South-West was traced to Marine Float Limited. The mandate we received from the bank showed that Marine Float is owned by a former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.”Musa Sunday, EFCC detective, testifying in the Dariye trial, 25 January 2016

He added: “Efforts at recovering this money have been going on. We did not succeed in recovering it.”

Dariye was convicted on 12 June 2018 and sentenced to fourteen years over the diversion of ₦1.126 billion in Plateau State ecological funds. The Court of Appeal later reduced the term to ten years, the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, and he received a presidential pardon in April 2022. The money the EFCC says ended up at Marine Float came out of those funds.

So: evidence given in open court, in 2016, by a detective from the anti-graft agency itself, naming the same company Achimugu would name in 2023 and attaching it to the same man — and describing money that the EFCC says it tried and failed to recover. That is a considerably harder thing to wave away than a recording made by a man with a grievance.

The part that cuts the other way

And then, on the day after the tape was released, The Whistler checked Marine Float against the records of the Corporate Affairs Commission.

According to the CAC records it reported, Marine Float Limited was registered on 13 March 2017, with Salman Braimah, Martins Udoh and Ghali Musa Danhodi named as its directors and shareholders. A CAC official, speaking anonymously, was quoted flatly: “We couldn’t have registered it (Marine Float Limited) earlier than that 2017. It is not possible; you can’t see a different date.”

March 2017 is almost a decade after Atiku left office. It is more than a year after an EFCC officer told a judge the company had received ₦100 million of diverted ecological funds.

There are ways to reconcile that. The Whistler’s own reading was that the company had operated for about ten years, and allegedly opened bank accounts, without being registered at all. That is not far-fetched: in the same testimony, the EFCC’s witness told the court that another recipient of Dariye’s disbursements, Ebenezer Retnan Venture, held an account at the same bank although the CAC had “no record of the company’s existence”. There could also have been an earlier entity with a similar name, a records migration, or simply an officer of the commission being wrong. There are also ways not to reconcile it, and one of them is that a central claim in this story attaches to a company that did not formally exist when the events are said to have occurred.

No one has publicly resolved it. We could find no public statement from the EFCC, which put the original testimony before a judge, addressing the discrepancy, and none from anyone else. It simply sits there, and neither camp has shown any interest in disturbing it.

What Atiku said, and what he did not say

He gave one direct answer that we could find, in an interview with the BBC reported by TheCable on 1 February 2023. Asked whether the voice in the leaked recording was his, he replied:

“that audio has disclosed nothing new.”Atiku Abubakar, BBC interview, as reported by TheCable, 1 February 2023

He also said: “All that I know, all corrupt practices or corrupt allegations against me have been investigated in this country more than anybody else and nothing was found against me.”

That is not a denial that the voice is his. More than three weeks after the tape surfaced, a direct question from an international broadcaster, and the answer is that the tape is not news. It is a careful answer, and its carefulness is the most informative thing about it.

His campaign went two ways at once. Daniel Bwala, a spokesman for the Atiku-Okowa campaign, argued the legality on Arise TV on 18 January 2023: “The only thing APC wrote is that Atiku said he floated an SPV to finance their party but what they don’t know is that SPV is used by business ventures and it is not unlawful unless it was used to commit illegal acts.” That is true as a statement of company law and completely beside the point as a defence, since the allegation is precisely that they were used to commit illegal acts. Bwala went on: “So if Atiku says the SPV remits proceeds to the party, then there is no evidence of any wrongdoing” — a defence that engaged with what the tape says rather than with whether it was genuine.

He also asserted that the EFCC had investigated and found no wrongdoing, and that “the investigations have been concluded”. We could find no published EFCC finding to that effect. The claim comes from Atiku’s side — including the voice on the tape itself, which says the EFCC probed Marine Float’s accounts “very well” and “found nothing”. The commission has never confirmed it, and its own witness told a court in 2016 that the money had been traced and not recovered.

Kola Ologbondiyan, the campaign’s spokesman, took the other route on 18 January and counter-attacked: he called Achimugu “a serial blackmailer”, demanded that Tinubu apologise to Atiku, and alleged that Bola Tinubu had used Alpha Beta, companies he said Tinubu “reportedly owned by proxy”, to “loot N100bn tax money belonging to Lagos State”. Dino Melaye, another campaign spokesman, said on Channels Television on 16 January that “Mike is being sponsored by the APC, Mike is being sponsored by Bola Ahmed Tinubu” and that “Mike is not a media aide of Atiku Abubakar”, and, as Channels reported it, labelled Achimugu a blackmailer with three ongoing blackmail cases in court — an assertion for which we could find no supporting court record. The PDP’s head of new media, Anthony Ehilebo, also called him “a serial blackmailer”, adding: “How can you even be recording a normal conversation? And there is absolutely nothing in that conversation.”

What we could not find, in any statement by a named member of Atiku’s campaign, was a claim that the January recording had been doctored. Daily Trust, in an April 2023 round-up of leaked political recordings, wrote that Atiku’s campaign team “said the audio was doctored”, but it named no spokesman and cited no statement. The named officials quoted above attacked the messenger, not the tape.

That matters, because a doctored Atiku tape does exist — a viral audio the following month purporting to capture Atiku, Aminu Tambuwal and Ifeanyi Okowa plotting to rig the election, which TheCable’s fact-check found to be a deepfake stitched together from earlier speeches, and which Atiku’s aide Phrank Shaibu publicly dismissed as fake. Different recording, different allegation. They are not the same thing.

Nobody ever tested it

The January tape has never been forensically authenticated by anyone identifiable. Peoples Gazette said it had been “authenticated by voice recognition experts” but named no expert, no firm, no method, and published no report. TheCable, covering the same story, wrote the honest sentence: “TheCable has not confirmed the authenticity of the recording in question.” TheCable’s fact-checkers ran deepfake analysis on the February rigging tape and, as far as we can establish, no Nigerian fact-checking organisation has published an analysis of this one.

So the position, more than three and a half years on, is that the subject has not, in any record we could find, denied the voice, and no one has ever proved it. In a country with functioning institutions that gap would have been closed in a week.

The petition, and the ₦10 million

On 16 January 2023, Festus Keyamo — then Minister of State for Labour and Employment and spokesman for Tinubu’s presidential campaign council — wrote to the EFCC, the ICPC and the Code of Conduct Bureau, giving them 72 hours to act. His letter said Atiku should be arrested, interrogated and prosecuted for offences against the Code of Conduct for Public Officers, money laundering, criminal breach of trust and criminal misappropriation, and conspiracy. At a press conference the same day, the campaign called on Atiku to step down from the race. “Atiku does not enjoy immunity because he is a presidential candidate,” Keyamo said. “However, facts are sacred.”

The 72 hours elapsed. Nothing happened. On 20 January Keyamo went to the Federal High Court in Abuja to compel the agencies to act, in a suit that also argued Atiku was unqualified to contest.

The agencies came to court — to ask that the suit be thrown out. On 3 May 2023 the ICPC’s counsel, named by TheCable as O.B. Odogu, explained the institutional attitude with a clarity that no press release ever achieves:

“We do discrete investigation. He (Keyamo) gave us 72 hours ultimatum within which to investigate and prosecute the 1st defendant. That is not how we operate. We take our time to do a discreet investigation.”Counsel for the ICPC, Federal High Court, Abuja, 3 May 2023, as reported by TheCable

On 5 June 2023, Justice James Omotosho dismissed the suit, describing it as “frivolous, vexatious and abuse of court processes.” He held that Keyamo had not shown how he was affected by Atiku’s alleged conduct, that “the court cannot compel investigating agencies to perform their discretionary powers”, and that suing immediately after a 72-hour ultimatum meant “the action was filed in bad faith.” He awarded ₦10 million against Keyamo, widely reported as a fine — ₦5 million to Atiku, ₦5 million to the ICPC — with interest at 10 per cent a year until paid.

Keyamo’s chambers announced an appeal the same day: “the struggle on this issue continues.” The next day they said the appeal had been filed, on an initial four grounds, and would be taken “all the way to the apex court”.

We could find no record that the appeal was ever heard or decided. Nothing in 2024. Nothing in 2025. Nothing in 2026. Whether the ₦10 million was ever paid, we could not trace either.

One agency did move, once. On 30 March 2023, according to a statement from Keyamo’s chambers, the Code of Conduct Bureau invited Keyamo to come forward to adopt his petition and to help secure Achimugu’s presence. Achimugu declined to be brought:

“I am nobody’s toy to bring along.”Michael Achimugu, on Twitter, as reported by TheCable, 31 March 2023

He wanted his own invitation and guarantees for his security, saying his family had been threatened and “Thugs have been to my abode.” We could find no record that a personal invitation followed, and no further public word from the CCB on the matter at all.

December 2023

Now the ending.

In January, Keyamo had denied that Tinubu’s campaign was working with Achimugu. His words, on Channels Television on 17 January 2023: “We’ve no alliances with Mike Achimugu.”

In August 2023, Keyamo became President Tinubu’s Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, assuming office on 21 August.

By October 2023, Michael Achimugu was working for him. An interview Arise News published on 9 October 2023, titled “Atiku Abubakar Who Doesn’t Have A Moral High Ground, Is Chasing After Bola Tinubu”, identified him as senior media assistant to the Minister of Aviation. He served the minister first as Special Assistant on Media, then as Special Assistant on Customer Relations.

And on 22 December 2023, Achimugu assumed office as Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority. BusinessDay and Legit.ng reported the appointment as made by President Tinubu, barely a week after Tinubu approved the removal of all directors of agencies in the aviation ministry. BusinessDay noted that some saw it as a reward for his loyalty to Tinubu in the elections, while others questioned the ethics of the appointment. The authority’s own announcement described him as a former “Media Director, of the Atiku Campaign Organisation”. He holds the post today: the NCAA’s management page lists him, and he was speaking for the authority as recently as this month.

Since taking it, his traceable public statements have concerned the job — a plan to monitor night-shift officers in real time, and, this month, a Nigerian woman reported missing after landing in Doha. We searched specifically for anything he has said about Atiku Abubakar since December 2023 and found nothing. The man who said he was speaking out “to warn Nigerians and educate them before the elections” has not, in anything we could find, returned to the subject since he was given a directorship.

What this leaves

Do not let anyone flatten it in either direction.

The allegation is not baseless. An EFCC detective testified in 2016 that ₦100 million of diverted ecological funds went to a company the bank’s mandate, he told a judge, showed was Atiku’s, and that the money was never recovered. That happened seven years before Achimugu released his tape, in a case that ended in a conviction for somebody else. The tape, whatever its provenance, is consistent with it.

And the allegation is not clean. The company’s registration date does not fit. The tape has never been authenticated. The man who released it now draws a federal salary from the government of the party that benefited from his releasing it. Atiku’s accuser-in-chief said in January 2023 that there were “no alliances” with him, and by October had him working in his ministry. And the court that was asked to force the agencies to act called the request frivolous and ordered the man who made it to pay ₦10 million.

Every actor in this story got something. Achimugu got a directorship. Keyamo got headlines in the middle of an election campaign and a ₦10 million bill. The APC got weeks of coverage. Atiku got to be the victim of a witch-hunt, which is a better position than being asked to explain a recording.

The only party that got nothing was the ₦100 million.

Next in this seriesWhy This Month

Sources

• P.M. News, “Ex-aide speaks on Atiku’s corruption via SPV, warns Nigerians not to vote for him,” 8 January 2023 · pmnewsnigeria.com
• Peoples Gazette, “AUDIO: Atiku busted for using Fasawe, Andy Uba to corner billions in federal contracts as Nigeria’s vice-president,” 9 January 2023 · gazettengr.com
• Of Counsel Nigeria, “Dariye diverted N1.126bn, gave Atiku’s firm N100m – Witness,” 26 January 2016 · ofcounselnigeria.com.ng
• The Nigerian Voice, “How Dariye diverted N1.126bn, gave Atiku’s firm N100m – Witness,” 26 January 2016 · thenigerianvoice.com
• Vanguard, “N1.126bn fraud: Court sentences ex-Gov Dariye to 14 years imprisonment,” June 2018 · vanguardngr.com
• Channels Television, “My imprisonment for misappropriation of funds politically motivated – Dariye,” 9 October 2022 · channelstv.com
• The Whistler, “ATIKUGATE: Directors rush to CAC to register company linked to PDP presidential candidate,” 9 January 2023 · thewhistler.ng
• TheCable, “Leaked audio: ‘It has disclosed nothing new’ — Atiku speaks on corruption allegations,” 1 February 2023 · thecable.ng
• Ripples Nigeria, “No evidence of wrongdoing, PDP exonerates Atiku over SPV corruption claims,” 18 January 2023 · ripplesnigeria.com
• Vanguard, “Alleged corruption: Atiku demands apology from APC,” 19 January 2023 · vanguardngr.com
• Channels Television, “APC sponsoring Michael Achimugu to blackmail Atiku, Melaye alleges,” 16 January 2023 · channelstv.com
• NigerianEye, “Atiku: Whistleblower, Achimugu a serial blackmailer – Anthony Ehilebo,” January 2023 · nigerianeye.com
• Daily Trust, “Obi, Atiku, Fayose, other notable Nigerian politicians involved in leaked conversations,” 5 April 2023 · dailytrust.com
• TheCable, “FACT CHECK: Viral audio of Atiku, Tambuwal and Okowa plotting to rig election is doctored,” 24 February 2023 · thecable.ng
• TheCable, “‘Height of desperation’ — aide asks Nigerians to ignore ‘manipulated’ audio about Atiku,” 24 February 2023 · thecable.ng
• BusinessDay, “Keyamo gives anti-graft agencies 72 hours to arrest Atiku over criminal ‘breaches’,” 16 January 2023 · businessday.ng
• TheCable, “APC campaign asks law enforcement agencies to arrest, prosecute Atiku for ‘corruption’,” 16 January 2023 · thecable.ng
• TheCable, “‘Non-compliance with law’ — EFCC, ICPC ask court to dismiss Keyamo’s suit seeking Atiku’s probe,” 3 May 2023 · thecable.ng
• Daily Trust, “Keyamo fined N10m for filing ‘frivolous’ suit against Atiku, ICPC,” June 2023 · dailytrust.com
• The Sun, “2023 poll: Court fines Keyamo N10m over frivolous suit against Atiku,” 6 June 2023 · sunnewsonline.com
• TheCable, “Court dismisses Keyamo’s ‘money laundering’ suit against Atiku,” 5 June 2023 · thecable.ng
• TheCable, “‘I won’t back down’ — Keyamo appeals dismissal of ‘money laundering’ suit against Atiku,” 6 June 2023 · thecable.ng
• Daily Trust, “Keyamo appeals as court awards Atiku, ICPC N10m in ‘frivolous’ lawsuit,” 6 June 2023 · dailytrust.com
• Channels Television, “SPV saga: CCB set to commence investigation of Atiku, invites Keyamo,” 30 March 2023 · channelstv.com
• TheCable, “Achimugu to CCB: I am nobody’s toy — send me a personal invitation,” 31 March 2023 · thecable.ng
• Vanguard, “‘Atikugate’ saga: We’ve no alliances with Mike Achimugu – Keyamo,” 17 January 2023 · vanguardngr.com
• Channels Television, “Tinubu names Wike FCT minister, Keyamo aviation minister, 43 others receive portfolios,” 16 August 2023 · channelstv.com
• Federal Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development, “Festus Keyamo assumes office as Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development,” 21 August 2023 · aviation.gov.ng
• Arise News, “Atiku Abubakar Who Doesn’t Have A Moral High Ground, Is Chasing After Bola Tinubu – Michael Achimugu,” 9 October 2023 · youtube.com
• BusinessDay, “Tinubu appoints ex-aide who accused Atiku of corruption as director,” 25 December 2023 · businessday.ng
• Legit.ng, “Tinubu appoints Atiku’s former aide who accused ex-VP of corruption, details emerge,” 25 December 2023 · legit.ng
• The Travel Port, “Achimugu assumes office as Director Public Affairs & Consumer Protection, NCAA” (NCAA statement) · thetravelport.org.ng
• Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority, “Director, Public Affairs and Consumer Protection,” management team page, accessed 10 September 2026 · ncaa.gov.ng
• P.M. News, “How I almost lost my child – NCAA Director,” 2 January 2026 · pmnewsnigeria.com
• Vanguard, “Missing Nigerian woman found safe in Doha — NCAA official,” 6 September 2026 · vanguardngr.com

The allegations described here are allegations. The authenticity of the January 2023 recording has never been independently established. Atiku Abubakar has not been charged in connection with any matter described in this article and denies wrongdoing. Michael Achimugu has not been charged with any offence.