The Governor of Bauchi, Isa Yuguda on Thursday came hard on the Chairman of the Northern States Governors’ Forum, Babangida Aliyu of Niger state, saying he is responsible for the crisis bedeviling the NGF.
Yuguda insisted that governors must be men of honour and integrity but regretted that Governor Aliyu did not speak up to defend the position of the north regarding the adoption of Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau as a consensus candidate for the chairmanship of the NGF.
He noted that if Governor Aliyu had not betrayed his colleagues from the north, there wouldn’t have been crisis in the NGF, saying that he would continue to boycott he meeting of the northern states governors’ forum until when the leadership decides to own up.
His words, “If 19 governors presented a candidate in a 35-member association the game is over and it has been consensus candidates all the way. We, your governors should be men of high integrity, we should be role models and we should not play evil politics because most people associate politics with evil.
“My words should be my bond. If I had sat down with 19 of my colleagues and we agreed on something, I should not see the chairman of that forum not coming to protect the integrity of the Northern Governors Forum and by extension the Nigerian Governors Forum.
“And that is why I say all the crises and all the unfortunate comments made about the governors today, the fault should be traced to the Northern Governors Forum because we are the culprits.
“I say on his honour, let the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum come out and tell Nigerians that either we in the forum did not come out with Jang as our consensus candidate or we, 19 governors, picked Jang as our consensus candidate”.
“If that has been done, all these things will not happen and that is why I say if I will sit with my colleagues and we take a decision and you go and do a different thing, I am not part of that.
“Me as a person, I don’t want to attend their meeting but my deputy can attend on behalf of the people and government of Bauchi State. But as a person, I will not. That has always been my position.
“You are all young men and my heart bleeds for all of you because there must be integrity in governance. If you don’t know how to tell lies, if you don’t know how to betray, if you don’t know how to have double face, you are not a good politician. But me I am not carved out for that.
“let me assure you that if there is no such code of conduct and ethics in office of a governor, very soon, nobody will want to be a governor. Go and think and sleep over this and you will confirm that I am right.
“There is honour in leadership and God sanctions leadership. If God has sanctioned leadership in our books of faith, I cannot see evil associated with leadership. So anybody that associates politics with evil and wants to play the evil way is not part of us”, Governor Yuguda said.
