Dahiru Hassan Kera
Nigeria’s current democracy has been on track for an unprecedented two decades without interruption unlike in the past dispensation. Yet, the nearly 20 years Nigeria’s democracy is being referred to as budding. And that could be attributed to the oversaturation of our national politics by primordial characters and the intrusion of the political murky waters by kindergartens. In the old order, credibility, pedigree, transparency and political doggedness were the only yardsticks to defining a politician unlike the current dispensation where unprincipled politicians have become like footballers where every season they move from one tent to another just to satisfy their individual desires to the detriment of their dewy-eyed and the unfortunate followers. But still, there are heroes created from today’s political ruptures.
The former foreign affairs minister during the Obasanjo’s regime and immediate past Jigawa State governor, Dr Sule Lamido, has remained the only nationalist and highly principled politician who through his visionary leadership disposition, sees politics as an avenue to use his God’s endowed knowledge to serve people and not to be served, to better the lives and the living condition of his subjects but not to accumulate unnecessary wealth and to realize a better Nigeria as envisaged in the mission and dream of our founding fathers.
History has it that, Lamido as one of the nine souls of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) being one of the G9 members, the agents of the return of democracy in 1999, has never in any way changed his political party because according to him, PDP has given him a platform to be where he is now, liberate his people, write his name in the book of nation’s history and therefore, he can’t denounce his political history. In a turbulent way that’s occasioned with incarceration and threats,they’d endeavor to formed the G9, G18, G34 which later metamorphosed to the largest political party in the whole West African region, PDP – a party he had never left for a second to have sojourn even amidst some misadventures and internal political mishaps.
However, when chronicling the annals of Nigerian political history, a dedicated chapter has to go to Lamido, as an advocate of the Talakawa brand of politics -he always sided with the downtrodden and marginalized people in all material particular and through thick and thin or rain and shine. During the Second Republic, Dr Sule Lamido was a member of the House of Representatives under the banner of the Peoples Redemption Party where he slugged it out with his capitalist oriented colleagues of the NPN and the UPN political parties. It was during this epoch that the youthful Lamido was able to construct an enduring coalition of like-minded political confederates throughout the length and breadth of the nation.
In fact, this rainbow coalition of sorts extended across all the chemistry of sectional, sectarian and linguistic groups regardless of tongue and creed and this marked him out as a nationalistic pan-Nigerian leviathan that has no truck for irredentist or ill-informed primordial inclinations or tendencies. it’s no doubt that, the true test of Lamido’s patriotic mindset was during the pivotal struggle to actualize the mandate of presumed winner of the June 12, of 1993 presidential elections, Chief M.K.O. Abiola pitted against the Nigerian military establishment.
In continuation of his successful and ever glaring political career, during the 2007 general elections, Lamido contested and won by a landslide in the governorship elections paving the way for his transformative revolution in Jigawa State in the health, educational, agriculture, manpower development, road infrastructure, power, water provision and youth and women empowerment spheres within his eight years tenure.
Lamido as a grassroots oriented leader and renowned political emancipator of the people moved swiftly towards delivering crucial democratic dividends to the people. Various contracts were awarded and executed by the state government for the construction of roads, schools, hospitals, dams, airport, water boreholes and what have you. In fact, Jigawa state from 2007 to 2015 was a giant construction site with a lot of landmark projects being executed for the welfare of the people and the state was envied and had remained a model to contemporary governors. The construction of the epochal Dutse International Airport by the Lamido government with the limited resources at its disposal will go down in history as one of the most enduring feats of any state governor in our present democratic continuum. He has been ranked as one of the most transparent and exemplary state governors by‘Transparency International’, a global anti-corruption watchdog. Indeed, despite the orchestrated campaign of calumny and witch-hunting against Sule Lamido, it is evident that his towering profile continues to rise daily to the chagrin of his transgressors.
In the buildup to the 2015 elections and free elections struggles, a principled Lamido unprecedentedly decided not to contest for a senatorial seat as it has become a norm for second time governors to aspire and go to the Senate, regarded as a chamber of former governors. He has also rejected pleas by many people to dump PDP to APC. His simple reason was, he will not leave the party he had labored to form and decamp to a new political party that was formed on anger, envy, and individual interest. Therefore, being one of the few notable and old figures remaining in the PDP, what the Nigerian nation needs come 2019 are credible people who believe in the Nigerian project beyond personal interest or vengeance.
Kera, a development journalist, wrote from Abuja
