Elder statesman Alhaji Tanko Yakasai has strongly condemned Alhaji Umar Farooq Umar, the Emir of Daura, for allegedly asking northerners to vote for his people in next year’s elections.
In a statement he issued personally, titled “My reaction to the codified campaign message of the Emir of Daura in favor of the PDP,” the elderly statesman said that it became inevitable to oppose what he called “the dangerous attempt to roll back the history of the country whereby some traditional rulers will be used by some politicians as tools to promote negative tendencies in political campaigns”.
The elderly statesman strongly advised the emir not to allow him to be used to destroy healthy political systems in Nigeria by reinventing the tribal politics of yesteryear.
He explained that it was not only divisive, unhealthy, but also outdated.
He condemned a similar comment allegedly made by a former agriculture minister, Alhaji Sani Zango Daura, urging northerners to vote for his own in the upcoming elections.
Yakasai said: “I have noticed an attempt by some political actors trying to revive the already discarded practice where some politicians were using some misguided traditional rulers to use their exalted positions to participate in political campaigns to denigrate some parties in order to of undermining their position in society.”
He added that he sees a conscious effort by the two top leaders in the north to destroy a pan-Nigerian dream in which all citizens cannot harbor a legitimate ambition in the country.
He stressed that such negative trends and practices should be condemned by all well meaning Nigerians.
He said that although he is now an old man, he still has some strengths to fight those negative trends and prevent them from rearing their ugly heads in today’s healthy political atmosphere.
He urged all Nigerians to join him in the fight.
