Obasanjo, Others Float Sule Lamido To Challenge Jonathan In 2015

There are indications that former President Olusegun Obasanjo and some other past leaders of the country are rooting for the current governor of Jigawa state, Alhaji Sule Lamido to run for the Presidency in the next year Presidential election on the platform of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
It is on record that Obasanjo, who brought in Goodluck Jonathan to run as Vice President to late Umaru Musa Yar’adua, had recently expressed anger with President Jonathan who he said promised that he would do only a term which is supposed to terminate in 2015. Obasanjo has since suspended himself from PDP with a provision that he would return to the party only when President Jonathan honours his promise.
Sources said that governor Sule Lamido, who is widely seen as political god-son of Obasanjo, has already confirmed that he would challenge President Jonathan in the next year Presidential election.
It was gathered that the Presidency and the PDP had initially dismissed the rumoured ambition of the governor with the hope that it was mere speculation that would fizzle out with time, but that when Jonathan summoned him to the Presidential Villa to clear the air on the issue, he made it clear that he would run.
It was learnt that Jonathan was shell shocked when Lamido told him openly that he was keen on running in the next polls.
“The way Lamido spoke with the President showed that he was not ready to back down from the race and the way he spoke about the matter was a bit unsettling to Mr. President, who had all along regarded him as one of the governors, who could not move against him.”
Lamido was said to have told the President that he had made up his mind to contest against him in the next polls despite a deliberate attempt by forces opposed to his ambition to frame him and his children up.
The governor, it was learnt, told the President that he was upset by the frequent embarrassment of his children by some agencies of government over allegations that one of them passed through an airport without declaring $40,000 in his possession.
He was said to have also drawn the president’s attention to the fact that there was a deliberate attempt by government agencies to tarnish his family’s image all in a bid to make him drop his presidential ambition but that he was not ready to back out of the race.
The action of the governor is said to have angered the Presidency, which promptly reported him to the National leadership of the PDP and asked it to call him to order.
It was learnt that Lamido was emboldened to go for the top job by some of his governor friends and  prominent Nigerian leaders, who are uncomfortable with the way things are going in the land.
Meanwhile, Lamido has declined to make a categorical statement as to whether he would run for Presidency or not, but said however that he had no intention of going to the Senate as is the practice with most of his outgoing colleagues.
According to him, the atmosphere for him to become president is not yet there, adding that it is better for him to seek a higher office than to go to the legislature to make laws after implementing laws passed by others for eight years. [myad]