2019: Lamido Woos Tinubu To PDP, Says Buhari Has Neglected Him

Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential hopeful, Alhaji Sule Lamido on Thursday called on a former Lagos governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to defect from the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in order not to be used and dumped again by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.

Disclosing that the Presidency had since after the 2015 elections sidelined and fought Tinubu through governors and ministers from the South-West, he noted that Buhari started integrating the former Lagos governor six months ago because a fresh election is afoot.

Lamido delivered this message to Tinubu through former Lagos Commissioner for Finance, Wale Edun, who represented the APC leader at the 15th Daily Trust Dialogue in Abuja with the theme, ‘’Nigeria and the Challenges of 2019’’.

He told the ex-commissioner, “Tell Asiwaju that his brother and friend says he is in a wrong party. He will only recover and reintegrate himself as a democrat if he leaves the APC.

‘’Asiwaju was only integrated six months ago. They were using his governors and ministers from south-west to fight him! We know all these, he should leave APC for them.’’

The former Jigawa governor hinted that a coalition of forces across party divide would unseat President Buhari in 2019, when he revealed that “2019 will be defined by borderless politicking. Those in APC and PDP will come together to save Nigeria’’.

He linked the emergence of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as President in 1999 to the search of a true national leader who could assuage the South-West for the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections believed to have been won by the late Chief MKO Abiola.

Going down memory lane, Lamido said, “Under June 12, my party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) won an election that was very transparent and we were all part of that process. We all worked for a very wonderful transition and had elections which were credible, open, and transparent but were annulled.

“Somehow, the west which produced the President was terribly aggrieved that their son, late Moshood Abiola, even though they never liked him, they only saw the fulfillment of their becoming President, which is something none of them has done and so.

“The annulment was seen as a ploy to deny a Yoruba man the opportunity of becoming President.

Then Abacha came and we all know what happened. Those people who are now laying claim to a new found democracy were active participants in Abacha’s government.”