SAN FRANCISCO, August 19, (THEWILL) – The presidency has condemned Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State over his verbal attack on President Goodluck Jonathan’s Adviser on Political Affairs, Barrister Ahmed Gulak, describing it as ill-motivated.
A statement issued on Monday by Godwin Akpovie, a political affairs assistant, office of the Political Adviser to the President, berated Lamido for the attack on Gulak.
Gulak had drawn the ire of Lamido when he called on the five northern governors – Sule Lamido (Jigawa), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu (Niger) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) – touring the country to desist from heating up the polity by their utterances and actions in recent weeks.
Gulak had maintained that as members of the same political family, it will be better for everybody to resolve whatever so-called differences exist between them and the Presidency within, instead of junketing round the whole country in search of what is not lost.
Lamido, who was apparently annoyed by the statement, was to describe the statement as “offensive and disrespectful”, calling Gulak a “boy.”
However in a statement issued on Monday, Akpovie wondered why the governor was in search of respect, asking how much respect any of the five governors has given to President Goodluck Jonathan.
“The other day, in company of some other governors led by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, they walked leisurely into a function in which President Jonathan was already seated. Is that not an affront to the office of Mr. President? How many of them will allow their Commissioners to walk into a function in which they are already seated?
“As part of resolving their so-called differences with Mr. President, they are demanding the sacking of some key personnel in Mr. President’s administration including Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the National Chairman of PDP. Again, can anybody, including Mr. President order them to appoint so and so individuals as Commissioners in their respective States?
“If l may ask, are they still members of PDP? If they still are, why are they more critical of the President than even the opposition? Respect is reciprocal, anyone who wants to propagate equity must come with clean hands. You cannot demand respect when you refuse to accord same to a higher office. Besides, what is disrespectful in advising that it is more decent to explore and exhaust all internal mechanisms to resolve any perceived grievances?
“As for Gulak being a ‘boy’, it will be instructive to remind Alhaji Sule Lamido that Barrister Gulak was the Speaker of Adamawa State House of Assembly in 1992, the same year Lamido was just a State Coordinator in the Olu Falae Presidential Campaign Organisation. If someone who was number 3 in a State, 21 years ago and has risen to become the Political Adviser to the President of the country, a position of cabinet rank, can be described as a boy today, then something is wrong somewhere. Yet Lamido wants to be worshipped just because he is a Governor, forgetting that those who live in glass house should not throw stone.
“In line with what Barrister Gulak said, there are no differences that have risen that cannot be resolved amicably since the five Governors and the President were elected on the platform of the same party, unless they have a hidden agenda,” Gulak’s aide said in the statement, stressing the five governors kept mute when the interim chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, called President Jonathan a kindergarten President.
