Former Vice President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has taken a swipe at President Bola Tinubu, saying the Presidency's decision to invoke China's strict legal system in defending the President has only drawn renewed attention to allegations surrounding the forfeiture of $460,000 to the United States Government.

Reacting through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku said the Presidency's comparison with China had backfired, arguing that Chinese authorities impose the maximum punishment for the most serious drug trafficking offences.

He said China would likely have treated the civil forfeiture allegedly involving Tinubu as the beginning of an investigation rather than the end of the matter.

According to him, while no court in Nigeria or elsewhere has ever indicted or convicted him for corruption, narcotics offences or any criminal offence, the same cannot be said of the issues that have trailed President Tinubu.

"It takes a peculiar kind of unintelligence for a spokesman to set out to drag an opponent before a hypothetical Chinese court, only to end up dragging his own principal into the dock," Shaibu said.

He maintained that the $460,000 forfeited to the United States Government in a civil forfeiture case linked to allegations of narcotics trafficking and money laundering would, under China's strict anti-drug laws, have warranted deeper scrutiny.

Atiku also argued that if the Presidency intended to adopt Chinese standards of accountability, the same benchmark should apply to other issues confronting the Tinubu administration, including allegations of budget padding, claims involving the alleged creation of a fake government agency by a senior presidential aide, and what he described as the widening gap between the government's "Renewed Hope" agenda and the economic realities faced by Nigerians.

He further criticised the Presidency's communication strategy, saying presidential spokesmen should protect their principal from avoidable political controversies rather than create them.

The former vice president also dismissed the Presidency's reliance on a response from the United States Government to diplomatic correspondence as evidence of exoneration, insisting that such communication was merely a routine diplomatic exchange between sovereign states and not a judicial pronouncement.

Atiku said accountability cannot be applied selectively, arguing that once the Presidency chose to cite another country's legal standards in political debate, those standards should be applied consistently.

The presidency had tackled Atiku for petitioning the United States president, through his US-based lobbying group regarding a 1994 civil forfeiture, allegedly involving Tinubu.