By Yusuf Adamu Gagdi
The above titled piece was meant to be a reaction to an earlier publication authored by Hon. Yakubu Dati, Lalong’s former Commissioner for lands chronicling his boss’s dextrous impetus in leading to victory, the campaign of the most maligned and vilified presidential ticket ever witnessed in the history of Nigerian elections, owing to the same religious beliefs of its bearers, at a time religious distrust and suspicion reached an intolerable height.
Rather than stick to the issues raised, my elder brother, Dasuki Nakande, a former minister of the federal republic of Nigeria and a statesman in his own right, condescended so low as to raining diatribes and invectives on the person of Rt Hon. Simon Laong, the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign DG, in what could only be borne out of sheer envy.
Nakande, a former member of the All Progressives Congress who crossed carpet to the People’s Democratic Party shortly after Lalong was named the APC Presidential Campaign DG, should ordinarily maintain sealed lips when APC and how Tinubu administration should form its cabinet is discussed.
As someone who left APC to PDP shortly before the 2023 general elections, it is commonsensically meddlesome for Nakande to delve into the affairs of a party he wished had lost at the polls; even more so, that he left the party because the person named to lead the campaign was someone he never wished well.
I am writing as someone who knows how Lalong had held Nakande in high regards and as someone who once accompanied the former governor to Nakande’s house in Abuja to greet him when he (Nakande) took ill sometime ago. I was privy to their discussions and the genuine love and concern Lalong expressed to Nakande at that time.
The least I expected was for Nakande to exercise restraint, if for any reason he must comment on the internal political wranglings in the APC, and do so as an onlooker that he is, rather than dabble into the arena.
There is no disputing the fact that Nakande was Tinubu’s political foot soldier in Plateau State, while Lalong was with Amaechi during the 2022 APC Presidential primary. But how that translated into their individual commitment and enthusiasm towards the electoral victory of President Tinubu, with the former ally turning into a political foe, while the former opponent leading the presidential campaign to victory, tells more of who is the true lover of Tinubu. A true friend is one who stands through thick and thin to the end.
In a Christian dominated state that experienced incessant religious upheavals, every sane person should expect that leading the campaigns of a joint Muslim presidential ticket is a daunting task that only the bravest of warriors can undertake – a description that Lalong perfectly fits into.
The acrimonious religious bigotry imputed into the 2023 election in Plateau State, explains why Lalong could not deliver his Ward, LGA and State to the joint Muslim ticket of the APC. However, the good news was that Lalong’s APC was not defeated by Nakande’s new found bride, the PDP. Nakande’s PDP came distant third in a state they had never lost Presidential election since 1999.
Lalong was branded ‘enemy’ of Plateau State by Nakande’s PDP not merely for accepting to lead the campaign for joint Muslim ticket, but they used it as a tool to further disinform the gullible Plateau Christian voters as a confirmation of his affinity with Nakande’s Jos North Muslim community, because he treated them as part and parcel of Plateau citizens, rather than the pariah treatment meted on them under the previous PDP administrations in the state, which Nakande is a member.
For allowing democracy to take full swing at the grassroots, where it was possible for Nakande’s fellow Muslim to emerge democratically elected Chairman in Jos North, Lalong was dubbed an antichrist by his fellow brethren, because of the lies sold to them by Nakande’s fellow PDP, who used same to campaign against the APC in the 2023 elections.
Let me unequivocally remind Nakande and his ilk that APC lost in Plateau State in the 2023 election because Lalong treated the Muslims in the state as equal partners in the development of the state, and appointed them into his government more than any government in Plateau State in the past – a development that was used by religious bigots to incite hatred for Lalong.
Here is a poser for Nakande and his cohorts; who actually is a winner between Aminu Tambuwal who as Atiku’s DG, delivered his constituency and loss the election, and Lalong who as Tinubu’s DG lost his constituency but delivered his principal? After all, who would have imagined that Tinubu could be defeated in Lagos State by an Obi of the Igbo extraction? Yet, that minor setback did not stop Tinubu from winning the election against Atiku and Obi who won their respective states.
While casting aspertions on Lalong for his inability to deliver his Ward, LGA and State, you forgot to intimate us if any of the persons you are sympathetic to have delivered their own wards and LGAs to Tinubu. They claimed they were fighting APC because of Nentawe’s emergence as APC gubernatorial candidates, but they were working for Tinubu. But how comes Tinubu lost in their polling units and Wards, while the very Nentawe they claimed they were working against, actually won in their various domains? Who is fooling who?
As I indicated earlier, I am not writing as ex-governor Lalong’s mouthpiece or issuing an official statement on his behalf. But as someone privy to the cordiality that existed between you at a point in time, you can be more decorous in issuing public statements against a former speaker of your state assembly and former governor of your state.
Some of us that are privileged to be in government at the National Level will continue to defend our leader, Lalong, before the president and whoever matters at the presidency against the likes of Nakande and his cohorts, who want to reap where they did not sow.
Rt. Hon. Gagdi is the member representing Pankshin/Kanke/Kanam Federal Constituency, National Assembly, Abuja.