Israel Umoh
The irony drips thicker than the early morning dew of Dutse. Sule Lamido, former Jigawa governor, ex-minister, and permanent politician of Nigeria’s old brigade, now wraps himself in the sanctimonious toga of June 12 martyrdom – asking President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to splash billions of naira on the family of MKO Abiola. What a convenient compassion! What a premium hypocrisy!
This same Lamido, who once gallivanted around the military thrones of power like a careful courtier, now wants to play the town crier of justice. This same Lamido whom Economic and Financial Crimes Commission approached Supreme Court to nullify the ruling of Appeal Court which discharged him over alleged N1.35 billion kickbacks for contracts. How time changes!
Where was this Lamido when the nation burned in the crucible of fuel subsidy fraud? When under the PDP-led administration, trillions disappeared like smoke in a windstorm — from the $20 billion whistle blown by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi to the infamous Dasukigate orgy of arms cash? His voice then was not just low; it was mute. He didn’t write letters or call for restitution. No clarion calls for the widows of Baga, the orphans of Chibok, or the slain of the North East.
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When under Jonathan’s watch, Boko Haram turned schools into slaughterhouses and churches into tombs, Lamido offered no grand press conferences. When pipelines were blown by a cabal of oil barons under the disguise of transformation, Lamido did not ask the government to compensate the Niger Delta youths whose future was gutted in smoke and soot. When during the bloody EndSARS campaign, some youths were reduced to smithereens, he enveloped a culture of silence.
Even under Obasanjo — the emperor in agbada — when Odi was razed and Zaki Biam soaked in blood, did Lamido ask for compensation? Did he cry for justice? No. He sat in the safe cocoon of power and privilege, untouched and unmoved.
But he is not alone in the selective sorrow.
Today, we see a parade of political actors auditioning as human rights crusaders. Governors who once held the levers of power — and squandered them — now weep over injustices they enabled.
Take Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi — a man who once served as a minister under Jonathan. Today, he lectures the nation on electoral integrity. Or, Nyesom Wike — fiery with speeches, but silent when SARS turned Port Harcourt into a city of fear and Golgotha. He weeps loudly now — not for victims, but for the microphone.
Even Peter Obi — the philosopher-king of a new political gospel — was nowhere in the trenches during the dark days of Abacha or during the bloodletting of early democracy. Yet he now invokes June 12 as if his hands bore the blisters of that struggle. They sulked.
With Tinubu on the saddle, Lamido finds his voice — a baritone of self-righteousness asking for billions for the Abiola family. A family that has not asked. A family whose pain Tinubu shares more intimately than Lamido can ever imagine. Tinubu bled for June 12 — not in prose or press statements, but in peril and exile.
Indeed, Lamido’s sudden burst of conscience is not justice. It is political theatre. A performance for the gallery. He invokes MKO not out of reverence, but of relevance. A man who is in a sinking PDP, looking like a drowned man to catch a straw. A man who once said “PDP is Nigeria and Nigeria is PDP” now wants to teach the APC government the moral weight of June 12?
Let us not be deceived and willed by the antics of selfish but hypocritical politicians. Who made Lamido an unsolicited spokesperson for IBB, the iron-fisted military ruler? When did he become the redeemer-king to the June 12 agitators and victims? Is he coming out from the political nest like a parrot to trumpet for his 2027 preferred presidential candidate? Why has he lost his voice in condemning the blood-thirsty terrorists or Jihadists branded by their sponsors as local hunters yet armed with assault rifles daily turning local communities to unmarked cemeteries, but forgetting that poaching is a crime in international and national laws?
The same Lamido who stayed silent when Nigeria’s ship was adrift under past administrations cannot now claim to be the compass of morality and conscience of the oppressed. His voice is not the voice of the people — it is the echo of forgotten ambitions.
June 12 deserves more than crocodile tears. It deserves truth, not pantomime. It deserves nation-builders, not bigoted leaders.
