Senator Adamu Aliero
One of the leaders of the Yar’Adua group, Senator Adamu Aliero, has refuted the allegations that members of the group have been meeting to plot against the alleged 2015 ambition of President Goodluck Jonathan.
In a press statement yesterday, former Governor of Kebbi state said: “We did not meet in Abuja , Katsina or Kaduna as insinuated in the report.
We have no reason to conspire or plot against President Goodluck Jonathan who was Vice-President to the late President Yar’Adua.”
Adding that “Since Yar’Adua’s death, we have done our best to support the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which went ahead to win a re-run poll in Kebbi State.” Aliero, a minister of the Federal Capital Territory during Yar’Adua’s administration, stated that the reports were being sponsored by those who were bent on “whipping up sentiments and to create crisis of confidence” between members of the group and the President. Below is the full text of the statement. Our attention has been drawn to a report alleging that some cabinet members and associates of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua have regrouped to stop President Goodluck Jonathan from securing a second term ticket or winning the presidency back for the North in 2015.There was no any iota of truth in the story, it must have been a mere imagination of the reporter in question. All those mentioned in the report were shocked by the extent to which their integrity was impugned.
For a weighty story like this, why didn’t the reporter speak with any of the personalities listed in the report if it was not self-serving.
We are all resident in Nigeria and he or she owes the public a duty to be fair to all parties. We are not ghosts, we are former public officers whose contact addresses are well-known.
The story was grossly deficient, unfounded, and in bad faith. In the last three years, those of us referred to in the story have not held any meeting over any national issue not to talk of 2015. Instead, we have been going about our activities quietly with utmost decorum.
We did not meet in Abuja , Katsina or Kaduna as insinuated in the report. We have no reason to conspire or plot against President Goodluck Jonathan who was Vice-President to the late President Yar’Adua. Since Yar’Adua’s death, we have done our best to support the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which went ahead to win a re-run poll in Kebbi State.
None of us has lived in trenches, we have no basis to go back to political trenches. We are not guerilla or subterranean politicians.
We are not involved in political conspiracy or insurgency. To confer this derogatory status on us is to assume that we are at war with the state or President Goodluck Jonathan. We have no cause to engage in any political conspiracy.
As for 2015, we remain committed to PDP and we will support whoever emerges as the Presidential candidate of the party. If the PDP gives President Jonathan or any party member its mandate in 2015, we will work for the success of the party.
We do not have any agenda outside that of the PDP. We have not held any secret meeting with the former presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change(CPC), ex-Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari on 2015. Again, why is it difficult for the reporter to hear from either the CPC or Gen. Buhari on the said secret meeting? The CPC has not hidden from the public those it is involved with in a merger or realignment talks.
The allusion to driving the Northern agenda in 2015 by Yar’Adua Group was merely designed to whip up sentiments and create a crisis of confidence between some of us and the President.
We are not being pressurized, as alleged, by eminent Northern leaders, to group together for any political cause. The entire story was a fabrication concocted by our adversaries aimed at causing disaffection.
We advise members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm to avoid being gullible to the antics of spin doctors, who sell “dummy” to them in order to use them to cause disaffection.
We are in a technological age where clarifying any issue could be done without much sweat.
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