Tale of the NEPU cockroach and PDP hen (II)

“Do you know that recently a top minister received a $250 million (about N42.25 billion) bribe for himself…he (minister) is in the cabinet; he is in this current regime; he knows and I know, and I told the President”. You are a liar, Jonathan branded the governor. “We have noted with much regret, the grossly […]

“Do you know that recently a top minister received a $250 million (about N42.25 billion) bribe for himself…he (minister) is in the cabinet; he is in this current regime; he knows and I know, and I told the President”.
You are a liar, Jonathan branded the governor. “We have noted with much regret, the grossly irresponsible, false and mischievous claim by…Alhaji Sule Lamido that President Goodluck Jonathan has refused to act on information that a serving minister recently collected a bribe of $250 million from an oil company”. The President deplored Sule Lamido’s “descent to the unscrupulous, reckless and thoughtless peddling of arrant falsehood”. Idan ba ka iya kama barawo ba, barawo zai kama ka, Sule Lamido, ka ji ko?
It appears to be in Sule Lamido’s character to always abandon the ideals he believed in. In 1993, he, as the Secretary of the Social Democratic Party and others abandoned the presidential mandate they freely received from Nigerians. In the year of our Lord 2014, Sule Lamido’s presidential ambition has collapsed in the face of relentless blackmail and intimidation from such paper politicians like Tony Anenih, Edwin Clark and Asari Dokubo.
Lamido should face up to reality; this is not the PDP he and others founded, this party has been hijacked by Jonathan, the so-called transformation ambassadors of Nigeria and other cronies. TAN, a state-sponsored, opportunistic and mercenary political organisation, appears to have seized the initiative from the ruling party and is now the one spearheading the re-election of President Jonathan. If the objective of political party is to capture power and achieve economic, political and social development of the country, then the PDP has failed.
Let us not forget that President Jonathan has failed to fulfil the number one promise that he made, solemnly, to his party men, that he would serve only one term. Now that he isn’t keeping to that, why should Sule Lamido and others naively accept a fresh new promise, on any matter whatsoever, from the President? Are Sule Lamido and others going to entertain fresh new promises from Jonathan? Is it not clear that this government uses religion, ethnicity, money, force and the bogey of party solidarity whenever and wherever it suits them?
So, what is the result of all those consultations that Sule Lamido made with those highly placed Nigerians? Remember the day Lamido and his G-7 colleagues went to show solidarity with Governor Rotimi Amaechi in Port Harcourt and they were shouted at and pelted with stones like foreigners?  That is why after taking that principled stand against misrule and the emerging fascism, many people were shocked when Lamido broke ranks with his G-7 colleagues and stayed back in PDP. Is that not why Saminu Turaki, his predecessor,  was propped up to start a movement – the so-called Saminiyya – to disparage the Jigawa State Government and dilute Sule Lamido’s grip on the politics there?

Lamido is now an object of suspicion by his party. Nobody really knows what he wants. He is no longer seen as a loyal PDP man, neither is he with the All Progressives Congress (APC). If Lamido doesn’t go to the fox, he will, sooner, have to go to the wolf. Lamido must realise that if he continues to stay in PDP simply because it is his house or because he built it, he risks becoming irrelevant after 2015. There is no such thing as remaining inside a misguided and misled party that has abandoned all pretentions to democratic behaviour.
The treatment meted to the Speaker of the House of Representatives is reprehensible and smacks of malice. It is a big shame that Aminu Tambuwal’s bodyguards have to be withdrawn because he left the ruling party. This government is just too partisan and lacking in grace. How can a civilised government withdraw protection for its number four functionary? What signal does it want to transmit to other citizens; that unless you belong to the ruling party, you are not entitled to security?

Sule Lamido knows that the desperate streak fed the citizens by his party that the APC is an Islamic party is mendacious and disgraceful. The Jigawa helmsman knows that PDP’s plots to remove sitting governors opposed to Jonathan is reprehensible and antithetical to democracy. He is also aware that the propping up of opposition legislators to impeach governors or hold parallel parliamentary sessions in APC states is anarchical, as has been proved in Edo and Nasarawa.  
Are we going to see an end to the violation of the rule of law, the extra-judicial killing of the Fulani, the spike in oil theft, money laundering, irregular power supply, insecurity, all legacies of PDP, simply because Sule Lamido pairs with Jonathan on a presidential ticket? Does the NEPU cockroach have a chance against the PDP hen? Lamido has no business helping Jonathan to retain the presidency and certainly doesn’t owe Jonathan anything. Jonathan, the party leader, has not been fair to the North or to the country; he panders to the wishes of Clark and Dokubo and, as such, Sule Lamido is not obliged to aid him to another term. Since his ascendancy, the Jonathan administration has made conscious efforts to decimate the North politically, economically, socially and spiritually. Lamido must work with other patriots and help save the country. Will Sule Lamido put up with the insults of Ijaw ethnic bigots? Will he put the country ahead of party and self?