Buhari Was Like Nelson Mandela In The North In 2014 – Katagum

Sule Katagum, former deputy governor of Bauchi State, has said President Muhammadu Buhari was widely compared to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi in the north in 2014.

Katagum who spoke in an interview with Punch, published on Friday, said himself and other northerners thought Buhari was a man who would clean Nigeria and make it what it was supposed to be.

 “The reason that made us join the APC in 2014 were that the party’s principles entailed things like fairness, justice, and so on. If you look at the motto of the APC, we believed strongly in the APC,” he said.

“In the north, there was no doubt, Buhari was like a messiah, Buhari was compared to people like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. We thought this was a man who would clean Nigeria and make it what it was supposed to be.

“Sadly, the principles, over the years, became more or less like those of the normal Nigerian political party. What we had expected, like I said earlier, after the failure of the Governor Abubakar’s administration in 2019, was a sort of reconciliation, a sort of reaching out in order to speak to ourselves and see how we could go about it.

‘In fact, to be honest with you, in 2019, I don’t think it was really the PDP as a party that defeated Abubakar; it was more or less an internal affair (that cost him his seat).”

The former deputy governor who recently left the APC, cited injustice in the party as reason for his exit from the ruling party.

“I joined the APC in 2014 and we formed the government in 2015 and 2019, I was the Chief of Staff and I even became the deputy governor of Bauchi State under the leadership of former governor M.A. (Mohammed Abdullahi) Abubakar,” he said.

“Unfortunately, in 2019, we lost the election, and the PDP took over. Since then, we, I mean the administration of M.A. Abubakar, were treated like pariah people. We were not part of the developing structure of the APC.

“In fact, we saw clearly that we were no longer wanted because all activities, all meetings, and all decisions were taken without the input of, first and foremost, the only governor the APC has ever produced in the state, Barrister M.A. Abubakar.

” Just because he, the former governor, lost his re-election, he was treated like that. I could remember when he lost the election. He tried to reach out to those who were in the leadership of the APC at that time. He said, “Look, let us come back together and build the APC from our mistakes that we made. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes, but I was not the only one that made the mistakes. Everybody made mistakes.”

“However, I do believe that was not the intention of the new leadership of the party and at the end of the day, up to this year (2022), when the primaries were held, we realised that even if our former governor of the APC came in and tried to participate in the primaries, he would not have won. Not because he doesn’t have the people and not because he doesn’t have the structure, but just because the party leadership didn’t want him to continue as governor.

“If they do not like our principal, that is, M.A. Abubakar, they don’t like us either. So, we were driven out, and the only reasonable and honourable thing to do, for someone like me, is that if you don’t want us, we leave you. So I resigned from the party.”