Former Governor of Jigawa state and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic party PDP, Alhaji Sule Lamido says Nigeria as a nation has lost its standards, moral compass and benchmark which explains why things are done without looking at their consequences.
Lamido stated this in his hometown, Bamaina, while responding to the postponement of general elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
He said it is calamitous to the country for INEC to postpone the elections just few hours to the commencement of the elections as result of logistical challenges experienced by the commission.
“To me, I am terribly agonized and anguish because I know our image as a nation is lost we have no benchmark and standard,” he stated.
Lamido explained that INEC has spent over three years to prepare and N189bn was released to the commission and it fixed its timetable four months back and continued watching the time clicking away and just announced the cancellation few hours to election.
“The issue is not about who will win the election PDP or APC is about Nigeria first because the whole world are watching us and what happened now cannot happen anywhere,Cameron, Chad,South Africa or even Niger and we continue claiming to be a giant of Africa, definitely something is wrong with us in Nigeria because everything is different for our wrong thinking,” he noted.
He recalled that the former INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega postponed election in 2011 at the time the President and Nigerians are on queue without considering what are the consequences of his action.
“Jega cancelled the election at the time Nigerians are in the queue without the consent of anybody for the problem he created and without thinking what is going to happen, thank God nothing had happened then,” Lamido recalled.
“In 2015, he learned a lesson and series of meetings with all the relevant stakeholders was conducted before the postponement of the election for the killing of corp members, the service chiefs briefed that they don’t have security guarantee base on that the elections was postponed”he said.
“If Prof. Muhammad Yakubu know that there will be problems that he has problem and he thinks such problems will lead to postponement of election he suppose to say it months or weeks to the election rather than saying it hours to the election,” Lamido stated.
Lamido however stated that it is not the issue of postponement of election or learning a lesson, it is about doing the right things through the right process and at the right time.
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