2019: Sule Lamido will step down for me as PDP candidate – Atiku

A former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, said on Monday that he believes a fellow presidential aspirant, Sule Lamido, will step down for him.

Messrs Lamido and Abubakar are among a dozen presidential aspirants on the platform of Nigeria’s main opposition party, PDP.

Mr. Abubakar stated this on Monday at the PDP headquarters in Dutse, Jigawa State when he met party leaders in the course of his campaign tour.

He said he believes Mr Lamido will concede the ticket to him because the former governor is his younger brother and shares the same political ideology with him.

He based his prediction on the scenario in the aborted Third Republic when the Yar’Adua brothers initially sought the tickets of the defunct Social Democratic Party.

The late Shehu, who was the elder, was running for president while the late Umar sought the ticket of the same party for governorship of Katsina State.

Mr. Atiku recalled that the late Musa was eventually persuaded to sacrifice his ambition so as not to jeopardise the chances of his elder brother.

“But with the intervention of elders in the state, the junior brother Umar Musa stepped down for another aspirant so that the politics will not be a family affair, leaving Shehu Musa to contest for president while someone from another family vied for governor,” Mr Abubakar said.

Mr Abubakar told the gathering that his mother was from Jigawar Sarki, a village in Dutse Local Government Area of Jigawa State before her family migrated to Adamawa State where Mr Abubakar was born.

His narrative was interrupted by a thunderous laughter and applause from the party leaders as he drove home his point that “Sule Lamido is my junior brother and will learn from what transpired between Shehu Musa and Umaru Musa.”

In his remark, the state PDP chairman, Salisu Mahmuda, called on the aspirants to be united to prevent what he called an automatic second coming of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration in the country.

Whomever emerges the PDP candidate is expected to be the main challenger to President Muhammadu Buhari in next year’s presidential election.

At the time of filing this report, Mr. Abubakar was holding a closed door meeting with Mr Lamido at his country home, Bamaina in Birnin Kudu Local Government Area, about 50-kilometre drive from Dutse, the state capital.