“I really have difficulty in addressing the issue of this type of award. While I may thank you for celebrating Sule Lamido as icon of Human Rights and while I have to thank you for your kind words, I get a bit worried that it has to take an outside body, because you are claiming to be the local arm of your parent body, to address a totally domestic arrangement. It has never been the reverse. It has never been our own going there to address or commend or give someone in Europe or America this kind of award. It is a little bit patronizing. I may feel elated in being celebrated or being given this or that award but then it leaves me with more questions. Why did I go into politics? Why did I want the people’s mandate? Is it not to serve the people? Then why should I be celebrated or commended for doing that? It is part of the tragedy of Africa that we have to be assessed and scored and passed by people like you and those you said you are representing”.

The above quotation is taken from the unwritten but tape recorded response of Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
when Amnesty and Human Rights Organization came to pay a courtesy call on the governor at Government House, Dutse and to announce an award to the
governor. Amnesty International, the global Human Rights watch, has subsequently entered a disclaimer on the award which its self-advertised progeny, Amnesty and Human Rights Organization, gave to Alhaji Sule Lamido.

Government House, Dutse heartily welcomes the disclaimer and identifies itself with it as indicated by the quotation above. The quotation is certainly not the statement of a local, ignorant and award hungry Nigerian governor. Instead, the above quotation and the cognitive and conceptual framework behind it speak for itself. It captures the essential Sule Lamido as a discerning, sharp witted and politically educated operator who has pended so many awards till he is out of office, including an Honourary Doctorate degree from a North American university recently, an award many a Nigerian public official wouldn’t mind transporting the entire state executive council to the United States to receive and show off.

As the head of a government, the governor and the Government House must welcome as many as those who knock on its door although the governor
reserves the right of what responses to give to each and every caller, provided the response tallies within the bounds of ‘diplomacy’. That was what happened in the case of this award.

In fact, Amnesty International would be most gratified if it watches the video of the last segment of the courtesy call where, with all standing, the governor and the award giver engaged themselves in a breathtaking impromptu debate on socialism. While the award giver was saying that Lamido was doing what he is doing in government because he is a socialist, Lamido thought and told him that he (the award giver) was no longer current in ideological thinking.

When a protocol officer tried to stop the ‘debate’, Lamido protested, saying the officer should leave his visitor to be educated.

While responding to the statement of the award giver, Lamido had, apart from the quotation which opened this rejoinder, tried to explain, among other things, why the Jigawa State Government paid the ransom it paid to a particular victim of a particular herdsmen/farmers clash on the basis of the White paper on that particular conflict, the primacy of peace ‘because there is no way I can be a governor in a graveyard’, the imperative for the Talakawa Summit, the oddity of the immunity clause in the Constitution, why he stands by his earlier statement that he is in politics to defeat any other party which is too weak to stand up, fight its way and win elections because “to do otherwise is to ask your opponent to help you win a contest”. The explanations were necessitated by his thesis that he does not have to be given award for doing what are merely his duties as a governor. Watching the video or listening to Radio Jigawa recording of the courtesy call, there is no where the governor stated he would be in Kaduna to collect the award later this month.

Clearly, Governor Sule Lamido knows who he is, where he is coming from and where he is going. On this particular award, Governor Lamido and Amnesty
International are standing shoulder to shoulder. The evidence is that it is uncommon for a designated recipient of any award acceptable to him to, at the same time, proceed to pulverize the award giver as is very clear from the opening quotation and the subsequent ‘debate’.

The only surprise in Amnesty International’s disclaimer is why it is coming only now when this same Amnesty and Human Rights Organization has been
doing business all over Nigeria, boldly and brazenly introducing itself ever since as the Nigerian Office of Amnesty International. Has someone been consciously sleeping in London and Geneva?

Over to Elisabeth Vikman!
Dated this 2nd of February, 2010,
Media Unit, Government House, Dutse
Jigawa State of Nigeria