Former Governor of Jigawa State and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Sule Lamido has lambasted the Northern governors over their recent trip to the Unites States.
Lamido said the Northern governors trip to the US exposed their ignorance of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The former governor made this assertion in a statement via his official Facebook page on Sunday.
Recall that the Northern governors traveled to the United States to attend a peace summit organized by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).
Lamido said, “Our Northern governors as concerned leaders traveled all the way to the United States of America to attend a lecture at the American Institute for Peace titled “ADVANCING STABILITY IN NORTHERN NIGERIA”, as to find a lasting solution to the intractable problems of insecurity bedeviling their respective states.
“Their concern, commendable as it were, ended up exposing their ignorance at understanding the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the very instrument which gave them the legitimacy and the authority to be Governors.
“If the Governors had traveled to the US to engage on how to boost agriculture or health issues or any other pressing local problems listed on the Concurrent List of our Constitution, this could be quite understandable.
“But to engage on issues which are on the Exclusive Legislative List such as security says a lot about the substance they are made of.
“Security is a very wide subject which their Excellencies must have capacity to grasp. Most urban towns in their states lack portable drinking water, and refuse dumps have taken over some streets.
“Our children attend primary schools under the trees and where there are classes, they take their lessons sitting on the floor, yet the security implications of this cannot be discerned by their Excellencies.
“Deliberate and harshly induced poverty by unplanned government policies have made citizens lose their esteem, honour and self worth by lining up scrambling to collect palliatives from patronizing and condescending leaders yet the Insecurity of this is of no worry or concern to them.
“You have governors with no human empathy or respect for dignity or decency in an open show of shame throwing money like confetti from an open Jeep and people scrambling to pick it like the Governor of Niger State. Yet they fail to see the security implications of all these.
“If the governors were serious and wanted to have a lecture on security, they need not have embarked on such a wasteful journey with the accompanying expenditure of flight tickets, hotels with all their aides and above all the valuable time wasted at the expense of running their states.
“Certainly, they could have gotten more than they wanted from our resourceful institutions such as NIPSS in Kuru Jos or ASCON in Badagry or even NIA.
“These three institutions have more than enough materials, essays and templates on the problems on security in Nigeria more than the far fetched American Institute.”
Elite or educated fulanis up North who control the North are a funny type: they always do the wrong thing and start correcting it. Yes, security up North is in the exclusive list of the federation according to the Constitution, but was it not under Buhari and his AGN Malami, both fulanis from the North, who instead of gazetting the fulani terrorists causing majority of the insecurity as terrorists that they are, officially labelled them as “bandits”, which is grossly a wrong labelling? You can’t solve a problem if you start by wrongly labelling or diagnosing of the problem, and this is exactly what the elite fulanis are doing un North in the name of providing leadership in the North. It is difficult to quench banditry because bandits have no structure or organization, unlike terrorists who are well -organized with structures, but the so-called bandits up North are highly organized, and this means the fulani elites ruling the North purposely gazetted these fulani terrorists as bandits so that the terrorists cannot be quenched! Very pitiful because these fulani elites are using to milk the North dry by engaging in these wasteful govt expenses and criticisms!