Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido on Tuesday urged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) family to apologise to former President Olusegun Obasanjo irrespective of his perceived shortcomings.
According to him, Obasanjo is still a father to the current generation of politicians in the country because he made all of them, including President Goodluck Jonathan, adding that the former president’s DNA runs in all their blood, including that of the president.
Fielding questions from State House correspondents after a meeting with President Jonathan at the residential villa, Abuja, Governor Lamido insisted on the need to apologise to Obasanjo as his children, if they (the PDP family) fell short of his expectations.
The governor’s position makes him the only PDP member who has pleaded Obasanjo’s cause, amidst the outpouring of criticisms that trailed his open show of dumping of the PDP and tearing of his membership card.
Lamido said, “Baba is more than a party man. He is an icon, a national symbol and a leader and an inventor, a creator of all the institutions today in Nigeria. From the presidency to the governors who are his own sons, are all his creations. And so, when a father is angry with his own children, we will only say we are sorry to him. But then we cannot be renounced for whatever it is.
“If you do any political DNA of our blood, you will find his blood in us. No matter what we are, we may not be able to live up to his expectations. We might have made some mistakes, but abandoning us is not the solution because the country is first before anything else.
“So, he is our baba even up to the president. Baba is our baba no matter what. He is angry with us, but then, what do we do? He gave us the life at a time when Nigerians were fighting us, he stood for us. Since 2011, in 2007, he stood firm for us. He is our father. And so, if we made some mistakes, we are only human because we are heading human institutions.
“And I think by the time he reflects, how could he abandon his own children like that. Wherever we are, we are right in his heart. He feels for us, he cares for us”.
Asked whether with his advise, PDP leaders would go back to the Obasanjo to beg him for reconciliation, Governor Lamido observed that such things are not done or announced in the media, adding that the former president might be feeling some pains over the issue..
He said, “When there is some kind of misunderstanding between a father and a child, you don’t go to NTA or any other media to say you are going to do this. I mean the bond between us is so strong.
“I know he is equally pained. I know what he is going through because he is our father, but I will not tell you the strategy because when he was producing us, you were not there, when he was making us, were you there?”
On the claim by some party leaders that they would not miss Obasajo in the party, the Jigawa Governor said as far as that assertion did not come from the president, it was inconsequential.
“But then, the first child is the president, did he say so?” Lamido querried.
When reminded that Obasanjo had consistently criticized Jonathan, the governor said, “What I am saying is that all of us are parents. When we were born, they pepped us, gave us their love, gave us everything.
“By the time they get old, naturally, there is what they call role reversal: we become the parents and they become the children. So, what is wrong if our parents begin to manifest those signs of old age?”
Lamido berated the opposition and their claims of massive support, accusing them of being the manifestations of the evils for which they were accusing the PDP of.
He said the country was too big to be ruled by an “aggregate of pained, angered and frustrated” lots. What is this opposition In Nigeria? You must know Nigerian history. Nigeria cannot be governed by an aggregate of pained, anger and frustration.
“And I have been saying those called opposition who are now abusing us, whatever might have been our crime, it was that crime that made them. We created that for them to become either governors, in the legislature , we created room for the, to emerge. So whatever they think is our evil, they are the manifestations of the evil. Believe me, you don’t know Nigeria”, he added.
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