FROM: PAUL ORUDE BAUCHI

The National Coordinator, Save Nigeria Crusade, Usman Yusuf Saminu, has thrown his weight behind the ambition of former governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido to contest for President in 2019.

He said that the group is mobilising Nigerians to vote out the President Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) government come 2019 because it has failed Nigerians.

Saminu, in a press release issued in Bauchi, on Friday, said they were earnestly urging Lamido to contest run in order to salvage the country from what he called “a paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty”

He was reacting to outbursts credited to Mallam Shehu Garba, the Senior Special Assistant to President Buhari on Media, captured in Daily Trust of Monday November 13, 2017, in reaction to the interview of Lamido in a national publication.

The Save Nigeria Crusade coordinator warned that no amount pf persecution against Lamido by the current administration would succeed.

“The time has come for the man who can do the job to be ushered in and Nigerians are desperate to usher in Sule Lamido presidency, come 2019,” Saminu.

He added that “political victimization and witch-hunting of Sule Lamido under the guise of ‘anti-corruption’ cannot reverse the hand of the clock”

He described Shehu of bereft of ideas as Lamido setthe records straight “for the near total collapse of our economic structures, as well as artificially inflicted hardships and raging poverty never in history experienced in Nigeria-as a result of the president’s expired and decrepit economic ideas”

Saminu wondered at Shehu Garba’s “empty headedness, saying that the Buhari’s administration in 24 months “inflation rose to above 300 per cent, FERMA was grounded to a halt, 2016 and 2017 budgets could not attain 35 per cent effective implementation, the worse ever in the country and the naira has collapsed to all time low, power generation is horrible while most APC states cannot pay salaries despite the huge bail outs and Paris Club funds, a development never witnessed under the PDP”

He advised Garba to “read the electorate act and the constitution and understand the meaning of criminal prosecution before dumping his garbage and tantrums,” adding that Garba “should rather “apologise for his boss’ inability and incompetence in office and for wasting 36 months in exchange for hunger, hardship and starvations. Nigeria will vote him out in 2019.”