Former Senate Whip, Senator Kanti Bello
Former
Senate Whip, Senator Kanti Bello, has accused the Niger State Governor,
Babangida Aliyu, of telling a lie over his claim that President
Goodluck Jonathan agreed to a single term in 2011.
Bello said, as a principal officer of
the Senate in 2011, he attended a meeting of governors and lawmakers
where the issue of Jonathan’s single term was raised.
The former Senate Whip told our one of
correspondents in a telephone interview on Sunday that he personally
raised the matter during the said meeting and that Jonathan did not make
any promise of serving just one term.
Aliyu had in an interview aired on
Liberty Radio, Kaduna, claimed that President Jonathan had agreed to
serve for only one term of four years beginning from 2011.
But Bello, a former member of the
Peoples Democratic Party, who defected to the Congress for Progressive
Change, dismissed Aliyu’s claims.
Bello said, “He (Aliyu) is being economical with the truth. You see, I will explain clearly what happened.
“When we were having a meeting, then I
was in PDP, we were there at the National Headquarters of the Party, we
the principal officers of the Senate, governors and some members of the
National Working Committee of the Party.
“A discussion arose and President
Jonathan complained about the sequence of elections and lack of support
as an executive President and member of our party.
“Then, finally I raised the issue that
it is not a question of election, you want to run but since you want to
run, some of us feel what you want to do is unconstitutional but since a
decision has been taken and a primary has taken place, the majority of
the people say run so democratically, there is nothing anybody can do
since there has been a convention and nobody objected at the convention
about your running.
“ I asked him, what are we going to take
in return to our people, what do we tell them? Even if we want to
convince our people, we have to take something to them, can you please
confirm to us here and now that you are only going to run for one term?
“To be fair to Jonathan, he did not
utter a word. You get it clear? He didn’t say a word, he kept quiet and
that is where we stopped.
“But later, Governor (Shehu) Shema of
Katsina State, and his friends, out of mischief, went and wrote a
communiqué that Jonathan was running for only one term. He didn’t say
it, but they wrote a communique, I challenge anybody to say that was not
what happened.
“You cannot say based on that you have
an agreement with Jonathan, you cannot say it. Writing a communiqué on
behalf of somebody who didn’t utter a word, I cannot see it as an
agreement. That was exactly what happened.
“The governors under Shema, particularly
Shema being the one who is a lawyer, thinks he is smart. He was the one
who wrote the communiqué and gave it to the press, that this is the
communiqué of our meeting but to be fair to Jonathan, he didn’t utter a
word and it was me who asked that question with Governor Danjuma Goje
there at that time.
“He was the one who was even saying Mr.
President, we are with you but I was the one who bluntly asked him if he
was going to run so that we can go and tell our people.”
When contacted, Shema said comments made
by Bello about events preceding the 2011 presidential elections should
be taken “with a pinch of salt.”
The Katsina State governor spoke to one
of our correspondents through his Chief Press Secretary, Malam Lawal
Matazu, via a telephone interview on Sunday.
He said, “The issue leading to the 2011
elections are normal democratic procedures that always involve
constructive engagement, dialogue, consensus and internal democracy of
political parties.
“Kanti Bello was a loser in that
election, therefore anything he said today, after having left the PDP
(the party that defeated him) and joined the CPC, should be taken with a
pinch of salt given his widely known antecedents of misleading the
public on critical national political issues.”
The governor was, however, non-committal
when asked whether the said agreement existed and if there was a
document to back such a claim.
Calls to the mobile telephone number of
Senator Danjuma Goje who attended the meeting as governor in 2011, were
not answered. He also did not reply a text message sent to him on the
subject.
But a former Senate Leader, Teslim
Folarin, said that the issue of second term bid by Jonathan was not
raised in meetings held before the 2011 general election that produced
him as the president.
Folarin, who represented Oyo Central
senatorial district on the platform of the PDP, told our correspondent
in a telephone interview on Sunday that the major issue discussed at the
caucus meeting that produced Jonathan as the party’s candidate was
mainly on 2011 and not second term bid.
He said, “I was at the meeting held on
President Jonathan’s ambition to run in 2011 election. That was the
focus. Honestly, I cannot recollect any discussion or issue raised about
whether he would recontest or not.
“The issue of second term was not our
preoccupation at the time. I don’t remember us raising the issue or
asking President Jonathan whether he would seek re-election or not. 2015
was not an issue of interest to party stakeholders before his
(Jonathan’s) emergence in 2011 I must confess to you.”
A Presidency source also challenged those making such claims to produce the said document if indeed it exists.
The source claimed that Jonathan neither signed any document nor committed himself to serving only a term in office.
PUNCH
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