Seriki Adinoyi in Jos
Chief of Staff to the Director General of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Organisation, Mr. Yakubu Dati, has accused the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, for trying to play the religious card after he lost the bid to be nominated running mate to the party’s presidential candidate, Senator Bola Tinubu.
Dogara had said that the APC’s Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket was “doomed to end in a spectacular failure”, and called on Christians “to resist the temptation of wasting their votes on the ticket” in the 2023 general election.
But responding, Dati said the former Speaker’s comment did not go beyond his usual championing of selfish interest under the guise of religious equity as it fails to contextualise his understanding of what state and nation building constitute in the current political dispensation.
Dati said: “One would have thought that if the former Speaker understands thoroughly the concept of nation building that he would have appreciated the bid to move the psyche of Nigerians from primordial sentiments to issues of development as there is nowhere in history that staying trapped in the past has served as a sine qua non for development.
“For this, lots of people have called attention to the fact that it is only when Dogara lost the bid to be running mate to Tinubu that he suddenly realised there was something wrong with the APC and the significance of religiously balanced ticket.”
According to him, all the while, it seemed okay for Dogara to be paired with Tinubu only because he sees himself as a frontline contender for the position and nothing more.
“But Christians in Nigeria are not fooled as they know those who have stood for them in the past, and that Dogara is not one of them as all his politics bear no such testimonies.
“Judging by the former Speaker’s antecedents, I dare say that even if Tinubu had picked a Christian other than him as running mate, Dogara would still have been sour about it as his records have shown that he is the type that always views things from a selfish perspective”, Dati affirmed.
Dati said Dogara can only fool those who do not know him, “but for some of us who are well aware of his past; we are aware that his narcissistic tendencies always becloud his sense of judgment.”
He alleged that though Dogara’s federal constituency of Bogoro/Dass/Tafawa Balewa has a good mixture of Muslims and Christians, no one raised the religious card when he was elected into the House of Representatives for a record four times!
He said: “In a constituency that has three local governments and strongly believes in rotation, one would have expected Dogara to lead by example by upholding equity through a rotational system that would have accommodated the others.
“If Dogara believes in equity and fairness why has he not made sacrifice to allow the two other local governments produce the Reps member for the constituency after he had served two terms in the House as has been the practice?
“As a good Christian that he claims to be, that would have served to establish that he believes in justice and fairness. But he failed to do so. From there, one can see that typically, Dogara only raises his voice when the situation does not favour him but when it does, he closes his eyes to it.
“That was how because of personal interest, he surprised many, when he bit the hands that fed him by trying to upstage Prof. Bogoro from the TETFUND simply because he felt the latter through his philanthropic gestures was becoming more popular than him in the constituency.
“His face-off with the former governor of Bauchi State, M.A. Abubakar, who enabled him to retain his seat to become Speaker, also points to the fact that Dogara is only loyal to himself.
“But perhaps the worst show of indignity and moral perversion was when the former Speaker having decamped to the PDP and won his seat in 2019, tried to circumvent the convention of the House of Representatives by working to return as speaker of the House on a minority ticket until the plot was discovered and nipped in the bud.
“To show how much he is lacking in principle, the former Speaker has changed political platforms more than four times at various times depending on his interest.
“So, it is clear that as far as Dogara is concerned, all that matters in politics is not the development of his people or meaningful representation but self.”
