A Northerner Must Emerge in 2015 Or Nigeria Will Divide- Lawal Kaita

Lawal Kaita, the close ally of former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who famously promised in October 2010 that the North would make Nigeria ungovernable for President Jonathan if he won the 2011 election is again spitting fire.
This time around he is insisting that a Northerner must emerge by 2015 or there would be no Nigeria.

Kaita said “We hear rumours all over that Jonathan is planning to contest in 2015. Well, the north is going to be prepared if the country remains one.

That is, if the country remains one, we are going to fight for it. If not, everybody can go his way,” he said in an interview in Katsina. Lawal Kaita said the recent stand of the party on consensus was a total negation of the motive behind forming the party.

It may be recalled that Alhaji Lawal Kaita had said in October 2010 that "The North is determined, if that happens, to make the country ungovernable for President Jonathan or any other Southerner who finds his way to the seat of power on the platform of the PDP against the principle of the party’s zoning policy".

Kaita, founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and close ally of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, had at that time warned that the North should not be blamed for the calamity that will befall the country, if Jonathan emerges President.

Now, if Nigerians had thought that Kaita was joking, his own principal, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, had come out openly on the 14th of December 2010 to say " Let me again send another message to the leadership of  our great country, especially the political leadership that those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.”

Kaita, who described the emergence of the Bamanga Tukur-led NWC of the party as a grand ploy by President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2015 presidential race, said the north would ensure he never succeeds.

He stated: “It is a disgrace that a party like PDP is running away from election. I am one of the G18 members who founded the PDP and we formed the party because of our firm belief in election. I have contested election five or six times. We believed in election, but now the whole thing has collapsed”.

“They are running away from election. This entire consensus thing doesn’t make sense. For us who formed the PDP, we regret what is happening now. Ten candidates, overnight, all stepping down for one person! All the candidates were renowned and each of them is capable of running the party, but they all withdrew…”

Kaita, who was a governor of the old Kaduna State, insisted that the just concluded national convention of the PDP was devoid of excitement, noting: “Tukur is a highly qualified person but the fact that he allowed himself to be used as Jonathan’s candidate is what has lowered his status.”