Following alleged heated interest already generated in some high quarters by the recent visit of the All Progressives Congress (APC)National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to former Sokoto State Governor who is a serving ranking Senator, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, a long-time Wamakko loyalist, Alhaji Mohammed Sada has come out to clear the air, saying that the visit was ‘just brotherly’.
He told Daily Spokesman in a brief exclusive interview in Abuja that contrary to insinuations and permutations in some quarters that the visit was part of a well-oiled plan to field the former Sokoto State governor to run on a joint ticket with Tinubu ahead of 2023 presidential elections, the visit was nothing political.
Senator Wamakko currently represents Sokoto North Senatorial District at the Senate where, as a ranking Senator, he is the Chairman, Senate Committee of Defence. He is also the Chairman, Northern Senators’ Forum.
Alhaji Sada appealed those he accused of sharpening their political swords and baying for Wamakko’s blood because of the visit to sheath their swords and wait for Tinubu, widely rumoured to be nursing presidential ambition in 2023, to formally declare.
‘’I found it very necessary to clear the air around misconceptions and permutations going on around Asiwaju Tinubu’s recent thank-you visit to the private Asokoro residence of the former governor, a leader who we are more comfortable to call by his traditional title, Sarkin Yamma Sokoto, loosely translated as the liberator and hope of the oppressed.
‘First and foremost, for those who don’t know, Asiwaju Tinubu is not strange to the house. Wamakko is not also strange to Asiwaju Tinubu’s house. As a matter of fact, Wamakko is a well-known face in Tinubu’s family house in Lagos where he knew Tinubu’s mother, the popular Lagos market leader and Mama Iyaloja-General of Nigeria of blessed memory, Alhaja Abibat Asabi Mogaji, who died on June 15, 2013 at 96.
‘We know for a fact that Mama used to call Wamakko ‘my son’, so he knew Mama even before knowing Tinubu. Today, fate has brought them together under the same party, APC, where both of them are leaders of their people.
‘’Also, you would recall that on September 18, Wamakko visited Tinubu in London in company of former Zamfara State Governor Abdulaziz Yari to wish him well after his (Tinubu’s) knee surgery. It is only fit and proper that Tinubu, upon getting better and back home, should visit and thank his brother. There is nothing political here. Absolutely nothing of that sort except that political interlopers would aleays read meanings.
Alhaji Mohammed Sada advised those he called political jobbers to seek more profitable ventures and desist from creating unnecessary political mischief where there should be none.
‘’We know and understand Wamakko’s brand of politics, it is focused, transparent and developmental. He is a statesman who believes Nigeria should be in the big league of nations where regionalism and sectionalism should not be seen in our body politic.
‘’During his two-term tenure as governor of Sokoto State, he abrogated the non-indigene policy that excluded non-indigenes in the state from benefitting what the indigenes benefited on the simple basis that it is God and not Nigerians could choose where to be born or what religion to practice just like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007 threw Lagos open to embrace Nigerians of all ethic extractions. These are the kind of Nigerian leaders we need for the 21 century’’, he said.
