Date Published: 06/04/09
LAMIDO’S SUBTLE MOVES TO DUMP PDP FOR PRP
By Dr. Ado Muhammad Kazaure
There is no gainsaying in the fact that going by Sule Lamido, Jigawa state’s governor’s recent moves to revive PRP in the country has clearly confirmed speculations that he has finally resolved to dump PDP, the party that brought him to power on May 29, 2007. One can recall two most recent and significant public events that tend to confirm speculations of a tyrant called Sule Lamido.
It is every average Jigawa indigenes’ belief that all is not well with Lamido and his party in recent times. His conscience has continued to haunt him because of the circumstances that brought him to power during the time of his Lord and Nigeria’s master of do or die politics, Olusegun Obasanjo. Lamido has told his confidants severally that giving his strained relationship with President Yar’adua he may look else where for a sure chance to get a second term in office come 2011.
It is public knowledge that he had constituted a ‘friends committee’ to start mobilizing members of his party to ‘sell him’ as one of the options to take over from Yar’adua in the event he dies or compete with him if he survives his ailment, at the party’s Presidential primaries.
It was therefore not surprising that Lamido threw decency, morality and courtesy to the dogs when he invited former President Obasanjo to commission some state strategic projects. The tradition has all along been for the country President to visit the states and commission those projects. What makes Lamido’s refusal to invite President Yar’adua most irksome is the fact that he and Yar’adua come from the same party, PDP.
One can vividly recall that even some state governors who are in opposite parties with the President put party differences aside and invited him to commission their state projects. Unfortunately for Lamido he did not mince words in telling Nigerians that his hatred, disdain and disrespect for Yar’adua by inviting a former President his key projects and worse more severally addressing him as ‘Mr. President’. Thank God Lamido has early enough shown his true colours and one only hopes that Yar’adua has clearly and unambiguously read the level of Lamido’s loyalty to him and his administration.
Going by the recent speculations that Lamido is dumping PDP for PRP along with some other governors in the North ahead of the 201 general elections, one has no alternative but to believe that his slight on his party and its national leader, President Yar’adua have in a way confirmed those speculations. No wonder, Lamido was drumming up support for the PRP the other day when he used state funds to host this year’s commemoration of the death of Aminu Kano in Dutse, the Jigawa state capital. What a waste of public funds.
I have no doubt in my mind that Lamido will meet his waterloo come 2011 in the hands of his master and former governor of the state, Ibrahim Saminu Turaki, Sardaunan Gumel, Senator Muhammad Alkali and also President Yar’adua and his party, the PDP. I am also sure that an average Jigawa state indigene is anxiously waiting to give Lamido a deadly blow at the polls should he decide to use another platform to contest the governorship elections in 2011.
Dr. Ado Muhammad Kazaure
( adomuhammadkazaure@yahoo.com )
Institute of Education,
A. B. U.
Zaria
