Before Lamido Endangers a Promising Career
By Hamisu Abubakar
If there is one northern governor that can be said to have been people-oriented and who has left his people in a situation better than he met them, that governor must be Alhaji Sule Lamido of Jigawa State. Before Lamido stepped in the saddle in 2011, Jigawa State was reeling from the throes of prebandal and retrogressive governance of the former governor, Saminu Turaki. Under Turaki, Jigawa was, perhaps, one of the worst administered states with all the indices of poverty and backwardness. Its governor had no clues on human capital development nor was he interested in any urban renewal so much so that Dutse, the capital city, remained an ancient abode.
Today, Dutse and its surrounding environs and, indeed, all around Jigawa have become impressively transformed. Dutse can now be said in all fairness to be wearing the look of a state capital “ from the antiquated scenery it used to be. There is admirable improvement on roadwork in the state thus making life a little much easier for the people. Jigawa now has a befitting Secretariat, a state university, an airport and a general upgrade of infrastructure in the state. What is even more commendable is the huge investments that Governor Lamido is making in the welfare of the ordinary people. The governor has taken education as a priority of his government and is improving access to, and quality of education by building modern schools and training teachers more effectively. The development that is going on in Jigawa State depicts what is possible with a committed and visionary leadership.
Maybe Sule Lamido does not know that the whole nation has taken notice of the eye-catching performance he is posting in his state. If he had known, he probably would not be engaging in any self-destruct dance steps. Yes, Lamido is about to self-destruct. Or how else can anybody describe his latest moves against the decision of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? Recently, the Northwest Caucus of the ruling PDP met in Kaduna and passed a vote of confidence in the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and his Vice President, Namadi Sambo, and subsequently endorsed them for a second term in office in 2015. Since the leaders of the Northwest PDP made their position on 2015 clear, Governor Lamido who was not in the meeting but was ably represented by his deputy, Alhaji Ahmed Mahmud, has been kicking and bellyaching about the endorsement of Jonathan by the people of his region.
In what is clearly the voice of Jacob and the hand of Esau, Governor Lamido is using the Jigawa State Chapter of the PDP to fight his own little battles. According to news reports, the Jigawa PDP has dissociated itself from the communique read by the Northwest leadership of the PDP in Kaduna. And in a comical turnaround, Lamido deputy who cowardly lost his voice at the Kaduna meeting has returned to Dutse only to regain the same and is now waxing an incoherent song of how the Jigawa PDP is not a party to the decision to endorse President Jonathan for a second term in office. œWe are not part of the decision; we didn™t know the content of the communique read after (Sunday) PDP Northwest zonal meeting at Kaduna; the government (of Jigawa) and the people remain loyal to the party and the Federal Republic of Nigeria; we are still members and remained loyal to the party and country, the deputy governor had declared to pressmen. The tonality of the press statement suggests a man talking with a gun pointed to his head. Poor Mahmud!
Well, Governor Lamido has not masked his ambition to run for the presidency and if truth be said, he is probably one of the few candidates from the North that would be acceptable down South. Lamido unlike Atiku Abubakar, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Bukola Saraki and General Muhammadu Buhari, stands a great chance of nicking the presidency by national appeal rather than vying as a candidate of the North. But that would be after the deserved second term for President Jonathan. And to achieve this, Lamido needs to get some things right. First, the governor must maintain his reputation as a loyal party man and a leader that can be trusted. When some politicians with inordinate ambition to supplant Goodluck Jonathan rebelled against the PDP, Lamido was one of the governors that refused to defect to the opposition party with them and he gained for himself an admirable respect for being a loyal party man. As a loyal party man, Governor Lamido must align himself with the crystallizing support of the PDP for the second term of President Jonathan in 2015. By continuing to put himself forward for the position of president under the PDP umbrella for 2015, Governor Lamido is only confirming the belief in some quarters that his heart has been with his colleagues who had joined the opposition party, APC, sometime ago.
Second, Governor Lamido needs to realise that he is too experienced a politician and leader of men to be reduced to a pawn in another person chessboard. There have been glaring insinuations that Governor Lamido is being used by a godfather to advance his own politics and vendetta against President Jonathan. According to this line of thought, Lamido has nothing against President Jonathan but finds it difficult to go against the wishes of his very powerful godfather. The danger in this puppet politics for Governor Lamido is that the nation may find it difficult to take him seriously again when the right time comes. And the right time will surely come!
Governor Lamido is not known to play clannish politics. He was former national secretary of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the aborted Third Republic. He was one of the principal characters that sold the SDP successfully to Nigerians. And as a democrat, he fought the military to validate the presidential election won by Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola in 1993. Ever since, Lamido appears to have remained forthright in his politics by sticking with the people. If the Jigawa governor has forgotten, Nigerians have been watching his politics and taking note. They are also watching him now about to throw everything away in a hurry either for inordinate ambition, bad timing or puppeteering!
Abubakar sent this piece from Kaduna via [email protected]
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