Former President Goodluck Jonathan says Babangida Aliyu,
ex-governor of Niger state, lied over his claim that northern Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) governors worked against him in the 2015 elections.
On Friday, Aliyu said PDP governors in northern states
opposed Jonathan’s bid for a second term because he reneged on their agreement
not to seek another tenure.
“Since this was against the grain of our earlier agreement
in the party, and which we the governors in the north felt the North would have
been shortchanged if Jonathan had succeeded, we rose stoutly to insist on the
agreement we all had,” he had said.
Aliyu’s claim had since elicited reactions with Jonah Jang,
former governor of Plateau refuting the claim and that he was not part of
northern PDP governors that worked against Jonathan.
Speaking on the claim, Reno Omokri, a former aide to
Jonathan, in a statement on behalf of his former principal sent to THISDAY,
said there was no agreement whether oral or written between Jonathan and PDP
northern governors that he will not contest for a second term.
According to the statement, Jonathan challenged the former
Niger governor to name witnesses that witnessed the said agreement.
The former president said Aliyu gave a different claim when
he was asked to give reasons why he worked against him in Segun Adeniyi’s book
titled: “Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President was Defeated in
Nigeria.”
“Babangida Aliyu is a pathetic fellow. He has become a
broken record and, sadly, he feels that is the only way to remain relevant. Let
me break his claim down for you in a way that it will be so crystal clear that
he is lying,” the statement said.
“There was no such agreement, whether written or oral. Since
he says it was written, then let Mr. Babangida Aliyu produce it. If he changes
his statement and says it was not written after all, but actually verbal, then
I challenge him to name witnesses.
“Mr Aliyu says the agreement the northern governors had with
former President Jonathan was for him to finish off President Yar’Adua’s first
term between May 6, 2010 and May 29, 2011, and then contest for only one term
between May 29, 2011 and May 29, 2015.
“If this is true, then how come former President Jonathan
lost the votes of Niger State at the Peoples Democratic Party presidential
primary of January 13, 2011?
“How come, also, that former President Jonathan lost the
actual presidential election, which held on April 16, 2011 to the candidate of
the Congress for Progressive Change, Muhammadu Buhari, in Niger State?
“General Muhammadu polled 652,574 votes to then President
Jonathan’s 321,429 in Niger State in 2011. He got more than twice the number of
votes secured by former President Jonathan.
“So, even if we want to say for argument’s sake that there
was such an agreement, of which there was no such agreement, wouldn’t Governor
Babangida Aliyu have been expected to have kept to his side of the bargain?
“The truth is that not only was there no such agreement, but
Babangida Aliyu is such a perfidious character that does not even know that his
current disposition contradicts his earlier statements.
“For example, in Mr. Segun Adeniyi’s book, Against the Run
of Play: How an Incumbent President Was Defeated in Nigeria, published in 2017,
Mr. Aliyu gave a completely different reason for working against former
President Jonathan.
“According to Mr. Aliyu, the Obama administration had
invited 12 governors from northern Nigeria to sound them out on their
commitment to the plot to unseat the then President of Nigeria. In that book,
the former Niger State governor said, The Americans had resolved not to support
Jonathan. They just wanted to size us up for the level of commitment to regime
change.
“Mr. Aliyu revealed in that book that he was an unpatriotic
individual, who held meetings with a foreign government to undermine his own
home government. He basically admitted to treason. Now, how can such a fellow
be taken seriously by people who believe in the unity of Nigeria?
“Witnesses at that meeting revealed that the statements made
by then governors Aliyu and Murtala Nyako were so dangerous to Nigeria’s unity
that it prompted a strong rebuttal from Gombe state governor Ibrahim Hassan
Dankwambo, who was also present.”
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