Where Was El- Rufai When We Fought For Democracy - Lamido

Forget NGF crisis, when it comes to money govs ‘re united

Governor Sule Lamido is arguably the most socialist inclined of the country’s 36 governors. In his six years in office as governor of Jigawa State, he has in several ways sought to give the imprint of the Talakawa ideology he inherited from his one time leader, Mallam Aminu Kano on the state. Such policies as the allocation of slots to women and the physically disabled at all levels of government, subsidy on quality medicare and education, and the frantic effort to extend infrastructure to reach the lowest cadre of the citizenry are glimpses of Governor Lamido’s socialist inclinations on ground in Jigawa State.

Following the Sallah Durbar marking the end of the Islamic month of Ramadan, the governor sat down for a brief interview touching on the recent effort by him and four other governors to mobilise some of the country’s elder-statesmen to intervene in the crisis in the polity. Of course, he spoke on the conspiracy of the elite class against the Nigerian masses. Excerpts:

BY EMMANUEL AZIKEN, POLITICAL EDITOR

What do you intend to achieve with your visits to the past leaders?
We are people who are normal human beings who are concerned about their country, who believe in their country regardless of which party they come from. If we are going to have democracy, democracy has rules therefore we should learn to uphold those tenets of democracy. If you manipulate it you are rocking the entire system. It is not against anybody’s aspirations, we are not against anybody. But we are being maligned, we are now being called a gang of five, we are now being called desperadoes. See how we are being maligned.

But if you look at us, these are people who stuck out their necks for this country two years ago, all of us! It is because we have the capacity to understand where we are going that is why we have the courage to stand up and say. It has nothing to do with this so called aspiration for 2015 at all, it is about the way things are being done within the system, the way the government is being run. It doesn’t matter if it is my own government or any other one in the country, the way the institutions are being run, the way the parties are being run, do they really conform with the rules of democracy? A situation where a hired hand like Doyin Okupe, a wage earner speaks only to justify his pay will malign me that I am irrelevant.

Justifying the wages
He became an aide after the election. These people who are now talking and abusing us are personal aides who became what they are when the mandate was achieved. They were nowhere when the whole thing was being worked out. It means there was an election before they were able to serve as personal aides. In their own case, it is an industry, they are justifying the wages they are earning, it is for the pay. There is nothing like honour in that because they are just hired hands if tomorrow you have another president they go to him.
-Vanguard