Atiku sees Lamido conceding PDP ticket
BY TAIWO FAROTIMI
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has said that Sule Lamido, former governor of Jigawa State will step down for him in the race for the ticket of People’s Democratic Party, PDP. He told a gathering of PDP leaders and members in Dutse, capital of Jigawa State that this is because as a younger brother and one who also shares with him the same political ideology, Lamido will defer to him by not struggling with him for the PDP presidential ticket.
Abubakar’s claim that Lamido is his brother is premised on the fact that his mother hailed from Jigawar Sarki, a village in Dutse local government area of the state. Her own parents however later migrated to the vice president’s home state of Adamawa, where she met Abubakar’s father.
It is however not certain if the two politicians had discussed the issue ahead of the pronouncement by Abubakar. But the former Vice President said there was a precedent when Umaru Yar’Adua, the late president stepped down as governorship aspirant in Katsina State, because his older brother Shehu Yar’Adua , also late, was seeking the presidential ticket in the same Social Democratic Party, SDP. Abubakar was a close associate of the older Yar’Adua. Though the general was one of the politicians barred from politics by Ibrahim Babangida, then Nigeria’s military president, Abubakar remained one of the strong leaders of his People’s Democratic Movement, PDM, which was to become a strong element within the PDP.
Yar’Adua junior later became governor of katsina and subsequently president of Nigeria before his death in May 2010.