From: Linus Oota, Lafia
A coalition group, the Campaign for Democracy and Good Governance (CDG), in Nasarawa State, on Wednesday, vowed to kick against any attempt to impose the Managing Director of Dangote Sugar Company, Engr. Abdulahi Sule, on the state as its next governor.
The coalition, comprising of notable politicians, civil servants, students, market women and other interest groups, is a union of concerned indigenes of Nasarawa State.
It also warned Governor Umaru Tanko Al-makura against imposing a candidate on the party and by extension the people of the state.
Governor Al-makura was alleged to have secretly endorsed the aspiration of Engr. Sule and that he has been working tirelessly to impose him (Sule) on the All Progressive Party (APC) as its gubernatorial candidate, for the 2019 governorship election in Nasarawa State.
Coordinator of the group, Dr. Mustapha Wamdi, who spoke exclusively to our correspondent after a stakeholders meeting in Keffi, Nasarawa State, said while his group remained sympathetic to the APC, it would not sit back and watch internal democracy threatened.
Wamdi also added that members of the group were “ready to ‘fight to the finish’, if Al-makura and his allies insisted on the candidature of Engr. Sule. Al-makura himself was not impose on the people. We voted him willingly against the incumbent in 2011. He is running the state without a godfather and he should allow the people of the state, especially the party, to willingly and freely choose a candidate of their choice
“Recently, a prominent traditional leader in the North was in the state where he spent two days on the pretext that he came to flag off polio immunisation programme , but he (the Emir) held clandestine meetings with some selected stakeholders in the state and directed the governor to work for the emergence of Engr. Abdullahi Sule as the next governor of the state,” Wamdi said.
He claimed that the governor had “confided in one of his close confidants” about the choice of Engr.Sule, stressing that Nasarawa State does not belong to any individual, as such, the group was prepared to prove this in 2019.
Wamdi continued, “There is no doubt about the fact that Al-makura has settled for Abdullahi Sule as his governorship candidate in 2019, while no one is oppose to the person of Engr. Sule aspiring to the office of the governor, we take exceptions to his intention to impose him, if anything, he must be a product of a credible process in the emerging new Nasarawa of our dreams
“The religious sentiment will throw the state into crisis, but the idea of zoning is well understood. Taking it to the northern zone is a clever way of eliminating some of the strong candidates from the western zone perceived as standing in the ways of their ploy, by which time the other contestants would be shoved aside for the preferred Engr Sule without recourse to what other stakeholders, particularly party members, think,” he said.
But when contacted, Chief Press Secretary to Governor Al-makura, Musa Elayo, dismissed the allegation against the governor as ‘baseless and lacking in substance’. He added that the ban on political activities and campaign has not being lifted and the party has not even come up with a guideline on how and when primaries of the party would be conducted. He insisted that the governor could not have anointed a candidate.