By Emeka Mamah
LAGOS — The Coordinator for Goodluck Jonathan/ Namadi Sambo Presidential Election in 2011 in Kaduna State, Alhaji Umar Gana, has debunked media reports that President Jonathan might drop the Vice President, Namadi Sambo for the former Governor of Zamfara State, Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima, describing such claims as “absolute rubbish.”
Gana who spoke with Vanguard in a telephone interview, yesterday, said that if Senator Sani could not develop Zamfara “which is the poorest state in the country today, the North would not do him a favour by giving him higher responsibilities.”
His words: “It is utter rubbish and a figment of some people’s imagination to suggest that Senator Yerima will replace Namadi Sambo as vice president. They are flying kites. I was involved in the 2011 campaign that brought Jonathan and Sambo into office. Some Nigerians believe that the Presidency is divided. In this country, we have only one presidency. We are not in a parliamentary democracy where the Prime Minister and the President would be trying to carve a niche for one another. In the system we are now operating, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is in charge and the Vice President must be loyal to him as one of his lieutenants.
Goodluck Jonathan and Namadi Sambo
“That is how it should be. We cannot expect Sambo to be competing with his boss, except they want him to be disloyal so that they would start using same against him. The presidency is an indivisible entity and the Vice President and the President have been working harmoniously together. He is loyal to a fault.
“People who say he is not pushfull enough do not understand the system we are operating. We in the North do not believe that Jonathan will just throw him away like that; for being loyal? It is not possible. To think of it how can anybody want Sani Yerima to be the Vice President of this country?.
“The current security problem in the North started during Yerima’s tenure as governor of Zamfara State with his brand of Sharia, so what are we talking about? He did not leave any legacy in Zamfara and people are talking about his taking over from Sambo.
“Sambo is popular in the North and his popularity attested to the fact that the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP, won elections in a place like Kaduna, with all its temperaments and manufactured upheavals; and other parts of the North.”
SOURCE: 16 July 2012.
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