NEWS: Senator Atiku Bagudu set to dump PDP for APC to contest Kebbi's governorship election.
Online Feedback:

Aziri Okoro: This is great, he has finally seen the light, he is dumping the sinking ship at last

Babatunde Oduwa: This is the calibre of people we need in APC, a man of the people

Hassan Keita: Let all the remaining people in PDP know that Change is here to stay, Hurray!!!

But, do you know who ATIKU BAGUDU is?

A cursory look at his Wikipedia page reveals--

Bagudu became a close friend of Ibrahim and Mohammed Abacha, sons of military ruler Sani Abacha. He and Ibrahim Abacha were involved in a scheme to buy vaccines and resell them to the government at a steep mark-up, earning $66.6 million profit.
Later, he helped divert much larger sums of money that had been earmarked for security spending into foreign accounts. security spending into foreign accounts.

After Abacha died in 1998, the interim military government that followed started an investigation into misuse of state funds. Mohammed Abacha and Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, his business manager, returned $750 million. There was no criminal prosecution. Bagudu moved to the USA in 2000, and in 2003 was detained there for six months on charges of financial misdeeds during the Abacha era. He was released in November 2003 on condition that he repaid about $300 million to the Federal Government of Nigeria.


The administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo apparently made a deal to recover part of the money in return for dropping prosecution and leaving the remainder with the family.[5] Bagudu was Chairman of Phil Nugent Nigeria Ltd. from 2004 until December 2005.
He was Abacha’s conduit through whom passed most of the $4-5 billion Abacha was reputed to have stolen.

Considering how much money Bagudu made from that administration, he had lots of cash to spend and win the senatorial election. He won overwhelmingly, polling 285,578 votes out of the 310,800 total votes cast. The Democratic Peoples Party, DPP, candidate, Alhaji Sambo Aliyu, who scored 8,377, emerged a very distant second, while 16 other candidates got inconsequential votes. The ANPP boycotted that election.
Let’s share some more details of Bagudu’s role in the Abacha government.


According to a report by a newsmagazine, The News:

He had set up Morgan Procurement Corporation and Mecosta Securities which, as Africa Confidential put it, “were involved in the illegal transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Nigerian state to the Abacha family.” According to other reports, Mohammed Abacha and Bagudu siphoned $66m from the $111m purchase of vaccines from the French firm Pasteur Merieux.

Senator Bagudu is also the Chairman of the committee that was set up to investigate the NIS recruitment scandal which killed tens of youths across Nigeria.

With such a character placed in charge of the NIS recruitment investigation, does anyone have any hope that a thorough job will be done? Does Bagudu have any moral right to stand among decent members of the society to perform such a function not to talk of contesting an election?