A former governor of Niger State, Mu’azu Babangida-Aliyu, has said he and other northern governors on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, stood against the second term bid of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 “because he breached the agreement for a single term with the governors.”
Mr Aliyu stated this in a statement issued in Minna Friday, insisting that there was nothing personal about it.
He said: “All the governors in the North under the PDP supported the then Vice President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to complete the remaining years of Yar’Adua’s tenure and to contest the next presidential election as a sole candidate of our great party.
However, midway, President Goodluck Jonathan insisted on running for the office in 2015 against the grain of our earlier agreement.
“Since this was against the grain of our earlier agreement in the party, the governors in the North felt the North would have been short-changed if Jonathan had succeeded. We, therefore, rose stoutly to insist on the agreement we all had.”
Mr Aliyu, who was the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum at the time, argued that “it is, therefore, wrong for anyone to erroneously say that I, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, had opposed Goodluck Jonathan”.
According to him, “As chairman of the 19 Northern States Governors Forum, the task was on my shoulders to voice out the position of the North which stood disadvantaged by the demise of Alhaji Musa Yar’Adua and the insistence that Jonathan should run for the office of president in 2015.”
He said the governors acted in good spirit and argued their points based on principle and on the subsisting agreement they had with Goodluck Jonathan, adding that “that agreement was written and accepted by all.”
The former Niger state governor said further that the governors didn’t oppose Jonathan’s administration, but were opposed to his insistence on a second term in office because the North would have lost out completely.
