Buhari should be grateful to PDP –Lamido

Sule Lamido

FORMER Jigawa State governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido, said at the weekend that President Muhammadu Buhari was a direct beneficiary of the crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The party which ruled for 16 years before the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged victorious in last year’s general elections that brought in the Buhari’s presidency.
Lamido spoke in his Bamaina hometown at the weekend when he gave an appraisal of the PDP’s woes, saying all the leaders including himself are to blame. He spoke of the internal wrangling which made some former speakers and others joining the APC to wrestle power form the PDP.
Lamido said the PDP is beyond any personality, it is beyond any living Nigerian, it is a Nigerian thing and cannot be appropriated by anybody”, he said.
“It is not about one’s own personality or one’s ego, but it is about this party called PDP which carries the Nigerian hope which was able to get Nigerians stabilised in spite of the vilification and propaganda and prepared the ground fully for Buhari to come in and become a president because if there is any great beneficiary of PDP in Nigeria, it is Buhari”.
He stressed that, “between 1998 and 1999, there was no way Buhari could have gotten the oppurtunity to contest, he can’t contest I don’t mean to insult him, but it is simply a historical fact that all those that are now calling the shots, is all, thanks to PDP because the country has been stabilised and reconciled.
“So, anybody in the Villa or Government Houses or wherever they are, who are now enjoying this APC thing are simply because PDP was able to restore the country and made it possible for them”, he stated.
“But today, no matter how big you are as a thief, if you go to APC, they would accept you, look at those going to APC in the last two to three weeks, these are people who are literally on trial by the EFCC”, he declared.
“Maybe because the PDP couldn’t stand up for them, that’s why they are going there or maybe APC has no qualms about fraud by accepting them with the intention of cleaning them”, he said.
According to him, from President Buhari and APC, national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, all other members of the APC metamorphosed from the PDP. On the possibility of a change of name for the PDP, he said as members, all must share the collective blame of the crises, stating that, “along the line, a number of things happened and everybody in PDP including me should share the blame.
He said, “the letters of P,D and P are innocent even APC has a ‘P’, but it’s we who are changing, when you abandoned AD, ACN,  CPC and now you are in APC you don’t have a different Buhari or Tinubu”, he stated.
“You can’t declare that Atiku that has now joined the APC wields more powers than the Atiku who was vice president, or are you saying Masari, Tambuwal, who are now governors, were not the same PDP speakers or the governors who left?”, he asked.
“As a party, even though we are going through a political crisis which is even good for us bacause it is a wake-up call, there is no campaign we are only screaming, but we are going round to our governors and our leaders and say, look, we all know what went wrong, let’s come back because in Nigeria, it’s either PDP or PDP”.
He said: “We have a good PDP which we had had in 16 years and the other PDP of the Atiku’s, Kwankwaso’s, Wamakko’s, in the guise of APC, it is the same PDP for God’s sake.
“If we had a very good PDP for 16 years, we are now having the very worst PDP of about two years.”
The PDP founding father said, “the courts and INEC cannot solve Nigeria’s problems in PDP, it’s not their business. Today, all the PDP state chairmen are all on the side of the Makarfi-led Caretaker Committee, the zonal chairmen from the six zones, the state’s assemblies of the 12 states we are controlling, the governors of the party, all former ministers, all former ambassadors and former presidents in PDP are on Makarfi’s side because that is where the party is.
“So, if somebody like Sheriff, who is my very good friend and brother, whom I like a lot, who is also not conversant with the tradition and culture of the PDP at formation, its mission for the vision for Nigeria”, so, naturally, it is more about the aura in power of leadership more than the function of the office in terms of what he can do for Nigeria, so I can understand because he was an ANPP governor, senator and then  leader and part of the amalgamation of the APC,” Lamido noted.

Source: The Sun