How Sule Lamido faltered when we planned to work against Jonathan – Amaechi

Amaechi

A former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, Tuesday narrated how former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, faltered when it mattered most after planning to work against then President Goodluck Jonathan during the presidential election in 2015.

Amaechi said they met behind the scene to work against the second-term ambition of Jonathan.

Speaking at the book launch by Lamido, the former Rivers State Governor said there were quite a number of times when they both disagreed on political issues

According to Amaechi, at the beginning of his friendship with Lamido, he (Amaechi) had thought that the former Jigawa governor was as radical as he is.

Both Amaechi and Lamido were in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before the buildup to the 2015 general election.

Amaechi, however, left the PDP for the All Progressives Congress (APC), which later won the presidential poll with Muhammadu Buhari as its candidate.

Highlighting some of the incidents that took place at that time, Amaechi said, “We had our bad times that we disagreed, I made the mistake of assuming that he was as radical as I was, so he was one of the governors I clung to when it came to radical decisions.”

He further stated that one of the incidents that severed their political relationship was when they planned to work against Jonathan during the 2015 poll.

“And I will tell you one of the reasons, there were several things that happened in the course of our friendship. The last one before we broke ranks was that we agreed, all of us agreed to go against President Goodluck Jonathan.

“The last one before we broke ranks was when we all agreed to go against President Jonathan. We formed a committee of governors and others. At the end of the day, he went to find a new party, the SDP. We said, ‘If we go to the SDP, we will lose the election. Let’s hang on to this one called the APC.’ He disagreed and left us. That is where we parted ways.”

Amaechi noted that he and Lamido would not have tolerated the current state of affairs in Nigeria if they were still serving as governors.

Amaechi, who chaired the Nigeria Governors Forum during Lamido’s second tenure as Jigawa governor, said their era was marked by bold opposition and a commitment to holding the federal government accountable.

He said: “I asked you (Lamido) this morning, what is going on currently in the country, in Nigerian politics — would it have happened when we were governors? You said no. And the answer is no.”

Amaechi added: “We would have confronted the government, confronted the president. That’s how radical you were. That’s how our Governors Forum operated. That’s how determined we were to change things.”