Atiku not ready to win 2019 election, says Lamido

An aide to Sule Lamido, the former governor of Jigawa state, Umar Danjani, says the PDP presidential campaign team of Atiku Abubakar is not ready to win 2019 election if people like Sule Lamido are sidelined.

Recall that Lamido was one of the aspirants who lost out at the opposition party presidential primaries held a few weeks ago. Most of the candidates including Lamido thereafter vowed to support Atiku’s bid to unseat President Muhammadu Buhari at the polls in 2019.

Speaking at the weekend at a stakeholder meeting in Jigawa state, Danjani said Lamido was not happy with the way the PDP presidential campaign team sidelined him in activities in the aftermath of the presidential primaries.

On Thursday, at a PDP stakeholders meeting at the party’s state secretariat in Dutse, Lamido commended party delegates for the election, stating that it was their choices that made some of the aspirants emerge as candidates.

“Whoever you elected both at the national convention and in the state you were guided by your conscience, but one thing in life is certain, selfishness is amounting to self-destruction,” he said at the event.

At the event, Lamido officially endorsed PDP’s gubernatorial candidate, Aminu Ringim; the senatorial candidates and House of Representatives in the state but declined to openly endorse Mr Abubakar as the party presidential candidate.

On the likelihood of Lamido switching support for Atiku, source close to him said: “Atiku has not been fair to Lamido, as a co-founder of the PDP and diehard member of the party who has never changed base, but Lamido has been sidelined in the activities of the party ever since Mr Atiku won the party ticket.

“You can imagine that they held strategy meeting in Dubai and Abuja but none of these meetings was he invited or briefed on the outcome of the meeting. I wonder whether the meeting is only for the PDP decampees and families because I saw the Senate President and (ex-Kano governor) Rabiu Kwankwaso at the meetings,” the source said.

Meanwhile, Danjani also said the PDP presidential campaign team is not ready to win 2019 election “because if people like Sule Lamido are sidelined then definitely Atiku should forget about winning the presidential seat”.

“You are having meeting with Rabiu Kwankwaso who just returned to the party without a structure on ground and having crises with all of his trustees thinking that he is relevant in Kano, you are wasting your time.

“We’re waiting for Sule Lamido to give us direction on the next political movement, because we can’t be slaves in our own house. We are going to organise five million youth rally in Dutse where all Sule Lamido supporters across the country will attend. There we will decide our political faith,” Danjani said.