2015: Aliero Denies Report That Yar'Adua' Men Have Regrouped To Stop GEJ
SAN FRANCISCO, December 25, (THEWILL) – Senator Adamu Aliero has denied a report published in a local newspaper that some cabinet members and associates of late President Umaru Yar’Adua have regrouped and met severally to stop the suspected reelection bid of Presidential Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in 2015.
Aliero, a former Governor of Kebbi State, former Senator of the Federal Republic and former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in a statement said, “there was no iota of truth in the story.”
The Nation newspaper owned by former Lagos State Governor and chieftain of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Senator Bola Tinubu in a report said, a former Minister of Agriculture, Sayyadi Abba Ruma, Aliero, former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Sarki Abdullahi Mukhtar, Yar’Adua’s Chief Economic Adviser, Dr. Taminu Yakubu, former Finance Minister, Dr. Mansur Muhtar and many other politicians have been meeting to stop President Jonathan’s bid in 2015.
The newspaper further wrote that the politicians even met with CPC’s General Muhammadu Buhari where a deal was reached to back the CPC Presidential candidate for the 2015 election as part of the North’s plot to return the Presidency to the zone.
The full text of Aliero’s statement reads: “Our attention has been drawn to a report in THE NATION on SUNDAY alleging that some cabinet members and associates of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua have regrouped to stop President Goodluck Jonathan from securing a second term ticket or winning the presidency back for the North in 2015.
There was no any iota of truth in the story, it must have been a mere imagination of the reporter in question. All those mentioned in the report were shocked by the extent to which their integrity was impugned.
For a weighty story like this, why didn’t the reporter speak with any of the personalities listed in the report if it was not self-serving. We are all resident in Nigeria and he or she owes the public a duty to be fair to all parties. We are not ghosts, we are former public officers whose contact addresses are well-known. The story was grossly deficient, unfounded, and in bad faith.
In the last three years, those of us referred to in the story have not held any meeting over any national issue not to talk of 2015. Instead, we have been going about our activities quietly with utmost decorum.
We did not meet in Abuja, Katsina or Kaduna as insinuated in the report. We have no reason to conspire or plot against President Goodluck Jonathan who was Vice-President to the late President Yar’Adua. Since Yar’Adua’s death, we have done our best to support the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which went ahead to win a re-run poll in Kebbi State.
None of us has lived in trenches, we have no basis to go back to political trenches. We are not guerilla or subterranean politicians. We are not involved in political conspiracy or insurgency. To confer this derogatory status on us is to assume that we are at war with the state or President Goodluck Jonathan. We have no cause to engage in any political conspiracy.
As for 2015, we remain committed to PDP and we will support whoever emerges as the Presidential candidate of the party. If the PDP gives President Jonathan or any party member its mandate in 2015, we will work for the success of the party.
We do not have any agenda outside that of the PDP. We have not held any secret meeting with the former presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), ex-Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari on 2015.
Again, why is it difficult for the reporter to hear from either the CPC or Gen. Buhari on the said secret meeting? The CPC has not hidden from the public those it is involved with in merger or realignment talks.
The allusion to driving Northern agenda in 2015 by Yar’Adua Group was merely designed to whip up sentiments and create a crisis of confidence between some of us and the President.
We are not being pressurized, as alleged, by eminent Northern leaders, to group together for any political cause. The entire story was a fabrication concocted by our adversaries aimed at causing disaffection.
We advise members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm to avoid being gullible to the antics of spin doctors, who sell “dummy” to them in order to use them to cause disaffection.
We are in a technological age where clarifying any issue could be done without much sweat.
SGD: SENATOR ADAMU ALIERO EX-MINISTER OF FCT.”