Lamido will Step down for Me, Says Atiku

Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, on Monday said he sure that a fellow presidential aspirant, Sule Lamido, would step down for him.
Abubakar stated this at the PDP headquarters in Dutse, Jigawa State when he met party leaders in the course of his campaign tour.

He said he believed Lamido would 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 (SDP).

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

Atiku, according to Premium Times, 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 he 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.
Whoever 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, Atiku was holding a closed door meeting with Lamido at his country home, Bamaina in Birnin Kudu Local Government Area, about 50-kilometre drive from Dutse, the state capital.