Former President Goodluck Jonathan, last night, described a former governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, as a despicable fellow, who resorted to lies and half-truths to try to remain politically relevant. Jonathan also called Aliyu a backstabber, in a statement by one of the ex-president’s former aides, Reno Omokri, maintaining regarding Aliyu, “As long as that remains his character trait, he will always be at the back.”
The former president was reacting to claims by Aliyu that the reason Jonathan lost the 2015 election was that all the northern governors resolved not to support him.
But a former governor of Plateau State, Senator Jonah Jang, similarly dismissed as untrue the statement credited to Aliyu that the then 19 northern states’ governors had met, deliberated, and decided not to support the re-election of Jonathan in 2015.
Former Jigawa State Governor, Mallam Sule Lamido, also yesterday gave voice to the controversial statement by Aliyu. Lamido denied knowledge of such a meeting where a decision was taken against Jonathan’s re-election.
“I am not aware of any meeting at which such a decision was taken,” the former Jigawa State governor stated. He added, “In fact, it was Governor Babangida, who is one of our NEC meetings at Wadata, implored me to back off my indifferent posture towards Jonathan, which I did and received a very warm applause from NEC members!”
In a related development, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Niger State suspended Aliyu over allegations of anti-party activities leading to cracks in the party in the state since 2014.
In a statement exclusively delivered to THISDAY in response to the claims by the former Niger State governor, Omokri, on behalf of Jonathan, said, “Babangida Aliyu is a pathetic fellow. He has become a broken record and, sadly, he feels that is the only way to remain relevant. Let me break his claim down for you in a way that it will be so crystal clear that he is lying.
“There was no such agreement, whether written or oral. Since he says it was written, then let Mr. Babangida Aliyu produce it. If he changes his statement and says it was not written after all, but verbal, then I challenge him to name witnesses.”
The statement said, “Mr. Aliyu says the agreement the northern governors had with former President Jonathan was for him to finish off President Yar’Adua’s first term between May 6, 2010, and May 29, 2011, and then contest for only one term between May 29, 2011, and May 29, 2015. If this is true, then how come former President Jonathan lost the votes of Niger State at the Peoples Democratic Party presidential primary of January 13, 2011? How come, also, that former President Jonathan lost the actual presidential election, which held on April 16, 2011, to the candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change, Muhammadu Buhari, in Niger State?
General Muhammadu polled 652,574 votes to then-President Jonathan’s 321,429 in Niger State in 2011. He got more than twice the number of votes secured by former President Jonathan. So, even if we want to say for argument’s sake that there was such an agreement, of which there was no such agreement, wouldn’t Governor Babangida Aliyu have been expected to have kept to his side of the bargain?”
Jonathan maintained, “The truth is that not only was there no such agreement, but Babangida Aliyu is such a perfidious character that does not even know that his current disposition contradicts his earlier statements.
For example, in Mr. Segun Adeniyi’s book, Against the Run of Play: How an Incumbent President Was Defeated in Nigeria, published in 2017, Mr. Aliyu gave a completely different reason for working against former President Jonathan. According to Mr. Aliyu, the Obama administration had invited 12 governors from northern Nigeria to sound them out on their commitment to the plot to unseat the then President of Nigeria. In that book, the former Niger
