Lamido to Edwin Clark Our Reporter July 20, 2013 12 Comments » Lamido to Edwin Clark •Mind your language •Say utterances can kill democracy By Shola Oshunkeye Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State has weighed the frenzy within the presidency towards 2015 against the utterances of some of President Goodluck Jonathan’s foot soldiers and warned them to rein their tongues lest they put Nigeria’s fledgling democracy to jeopardy. The populist governor made the declaration during an interactive session with some top journalists in Dutse, the state capital, recently. In particular, Lamido did a critique of the public declarations of the president’s men, especially Chief Edwin Clark, and urged caution. Clark, Lamido maintained, was fond of saying: “Our son must have a second term;” “…He is our son, he must have it.” “Well, if Clark says President Jonathan must get the PDP ticket, we can understand. He can say so. But as for second term in office, this is a function of election. When you say ‘he is our son, he must have it’, you must remember that what you are saying is a function of election. And it doesn’t mean that he (the president) is going to win the election. In any case, when you say categorically that the president must win the (2015) election, what are you talking about? Where is democracy?” Still, the governor was not done. He stopped short of accusing Clark of encouraging do-or-die politics in the approach to 2015, but exclaimed at the sudden shift in the status of the elder statesman. “In 2011,” Lamido continued, “The name Edwin Clark was not part of PDP vocabulary. But look at it today; it has become the main vocabulary. And what is the qualification? Emotion and sentiments.” After adding up recent happenings in the polity, the Jigawa governor advised Clark to remain an elder statesman by shunning divisive tendencies and pronouncements; putting Nigeria first in everything he does and says. See full interview in Sunday Sun tomorrow.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 09:30:15 +0000
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