Pages

Monday 29 December 2014

Gov. Lamido Leads Fresh Opposition Within PDP Against Goodluck Jonathan Re-Election Bid In 2015

Indications emerged, weekend, that Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State had openly rejected the re-election bid of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.
Although there had been speculations in the past that Lamido was unhappy with Jonathan over the way he had been treated by the leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party and the president’s unfulfilled promises to the state, Lamido openly voiced his opposition to Jonathan’s candidacy at a PDP rally in Dutse on Saturday.

Apparently to send Lamido’s message loud and clear to the Presidency, the event which was held at the state capital, was transmitted live via a private television station with national coverage.
Again, to prove his anger against Jonathan, the organisers of the PDP event deliberately and carefully avoided displaying the President’s posters throughout the rally.
On the other hand, the campaign posters of the governorship candidate of the PDP in the state and those of other contestants for the state and national elections were conspicuously and generously displayed.
Besides, rather than await the President to present the flags to the PDP candidates as is the custom of the party, the governor went ahead to perform the event, apparently preventing Jonathan from performing the political tradition just before elections.
None of the candidates canvassed for support for Jonathan throughout the rally, which was well attended by the members of the party in the state.
Vanguard learnt from a top source in Dutse on Sunday that Lamido felt bitter and betrayed by both Jonathan and the PDP for not doing any tangible project in Jigawa State after he had risked his life and those of his family members to work for Jonathan’s victory in 2011.
The source pointed out that the refusal or the inability of Jonathan to undertake any of the four key projects, which he openly promised the people during his 2011 campaign had pitted the governor against the political leaders and people of the state.
President Jonathan, it was learnt, had promised to build a cargo airport in Dutse, rebuild broken federal roads abandoned in the state for over 20 years, construct a dam at Auyo and build a major waterworks in the capital, four promises yet to be fulfilled with less than two months to the next polls.
It was also revealed out of the N15 billion spent by state government on the building of the Duste International Airport, which Jonathan commissioned on October 21 this year, the Federal Government had only chipped in less than a billion.
A top source in the state confided in Vanguard that Lamido was being portrayed as a traitor by most of the citizens, who see him as supporting Jonathan for personal reasons but working against their interest.
Governor Sule Lamido and six other governors of the PDP-Rotimi Amaechi, Aliyu Wamakko, Abdulfattah Ahmed, Murtala Nyako, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Babangida Aliyu, who at a time were fondly referred to as the G-7 governors, wanted to upstage the culture of servitude in the party and they nearly got drowned by the weight of the behemoth.
Their simmering discomfort with their party and the Presidency came to the fore on August 31, 2013 when they protested over the conduct of the mini convention of the PDP at the Eagle Square, Abuja. 
They stormed out of the venue of the National Convention and marched straight to the Yar’Adua Centre where they declared their dissatisfaction with the turn of events in the party they had always supported and worked for. To demonstrate their seriousness, they immediately floated a new faction which was known as the new PDP, which was subsequently disallowed by the court. When the effort to sustain the faction was resisted by the mainstream and the court, some of the G-7 members defected to the newly-formed All Progressives Congress, APC, on December 16, 2013, damning the fearsome consequences awaiting them then and in the future. In that daring category were Rotimi Amaechi, Ahmed Abdulfattah, Aliyu Wamakko, Rabiu   Kwankwaso and Murtala Nyako.  Two men-Babangida Aliyu and Sule Lamido, refused to leave the PDP, insisting that they could not abandon the house they helped to build for tenants to take over.  
The rest is history. Murtala Nyako, who was one of the five who jumped ship to the APC, has since been flushed out of the ship with a sledgehammer of politics while the rest are still being pursued with horsewhips to ensure that they retrace their steps or be grounded especially as the next phase of elections draws near.

One man-Sule Lamido, who has remained steadfast in its pursuit of welfare and physical development for his people, has insisted that the right thing must be done for him to return into the mainstream politics of the PDP. While he distanced himself from major programmes of the party to drive home of disagreement with the way things were going, he refrained from abusing or insulting the leadership. In the heat of the crisis, he restricted himself to Dutse the state capital and avoided meetings called by the party. But the party knew his worth and would not move against him.

They saw his political relevance to the party and they coveted it. Lamido boosted his political profile when he conducted election into the 27 LGAs of the state on January 21, 2014 and his party won everywhere. It was difficult for the party leadership to ignore him. That was how strident efforts were being made to lure him back into the mainstream. But while that was being done by the party, information began to filter into town that Lamido had assembled a formidable team to wrestle power from Jonathan in 2015. Lamido has however never told anyone that he wanted to contest the 2015 Presidency. If for anything, he has often maintained that even though he would want to run as for the Presidency, the atmosphere was not ripe for him to do so. 

This much he told journalists in his Bamaina country home in January this year. That notwithstanding,  those who were bent on creating a safe distance between him and the Presidency still went to town with the claim that the governor was frontally opposed to Jonathan and the PDP. But all this fizzled on September 18, 2014, when the governor personally appeared at the National Executive Council meeting of the PDP and earned unending applause as he joined his colleagues to endorse President Jonathan as the sole candidate for next year’s election. This was at the peak of insinuations that Lamido has completed plans to launch his presidential campaign team with a view to flushing out Jonathan.

There was no doubt that Lamido was upset that Jonathan did not fulfil most of the campaign promises he had made to the people of the state during his presidential campaigns. The governor, who stood in the gap for Jonathan during the campaigns and election that gave him victory in Jigawa had been at odds to explain to his people why nothing concrete came their way since after the election. In fact, it was clearly stated that out of the N15 billion that the state government used in constructing the magnificent airport, the Federal Government only contributed N750 million.

Via -Vanguard

No comments:

Post a Comment