This piece is not meant to eulogise the Senate President but only to highlight how Saraki has become a political metaphor on how not to play politics.
Tony Iwuoma
Like the beautiful woman she was, she allowed herself to be seduced by another man. She abandoned the home she contributed to build for years, even his father’s estate and her children, to go after a strange man. But like cuckolded Hosea in the Bible, her husband never lost hope of her eventual return. And as Igbo say, when a woman marries two husbands, it would soon dawn on her which was the better husband. This woman realised she had bought into a lie and scampered back to her loving husband’s patient arms still outstretched in the past three years, leaving the new husband confused and ranting.
This is the story of Bukola Saraki, son of Oloye, strong man of Kwara politics.
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Now, this piece is not meant to eulogise the Senate President but only to highlight how Saraki has become a political metaphor on how not to play politics. His is a clear case of why they say politics is a dirty game. However, is politics truly dirty, or the players?
Saraki was a founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on whose platform he had served the maximum two terms of eight years, as governor of Kwara State. This, regardless, he still followed the lead in PDP’s balkanisation in 2014, resulting in the amalgam of strange bedfellows and cobbled up the All Progressives Congress (APC) which eventually shoved Goodluck Jonathan out of Aso Rock Presidential Villa though results of that election remain suspicious till date.
Of course, Saraki soon apprehended that his new party had the same baggage as the PDP, if not worse. His battle began when he emerged senate president against the dictates of the party hierarchy with the backing of his erstwhile party members in PDP, who produced his deputy. The APC power lords were enraged and like a bull in a china shop and unleashed heinous schemes to deal with ‘their own’, beginning from his trial at the Code of Conduct tribunal. However, like a cat with nine lives, Saraki gingerly stepped over all the booby traps, thanks to his ability to carry majority of the senators along.
The worst thus far was labeling the president of the Nigerian senate as an armed robber before the international community. My goodness! What manner of country is ours when its number three citizen is an armed robber; and we expect foreign investors to come here? If Saraki was the kingpin of the Offa robbers, then so are all the politicians because they all have thugs at their beck and call, who kill, break a few heads, snatch ballot boxes, etc. In other words, we are a nation of robbers, ruled by robbers.
Actually, there is nothing to that, as indeed, we are inhabited by robbers and looters in every sector. It is all a question of who stole the most. A peep into the huge pile of stolen funds recovered by Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) alone will tell you how rotten we are.
However, what prompted this is the rabid fixation of APC on Saraki’s ouster, as senate president, having dumped the APC. They are not even covert about this. I think the comrade-in-arms at APC headquarters, Adams Oshiomhole, is holding a pirated copy of the law books with some missing or doctored pages. He needs to quickly learn that being the national chairman of a big party like the APC is different from picketing a pure water factory in the name of trade unionism. He is embarrassing the party and those who brought him in. And by the way, is the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige, still at his desk? I thought Oshiomhole had sacked him by now. That is what we get when we are adorned in undeserving garments. We begin to bark orders to please our paymasters and hurt them in the bargain.
Was this not what led to the imprudent invasion of National Assembly complex? Of course, Lawal Daura, ex-boss of Department of State Security, DSS, had been made the fall guy of the impish plot in the usual scapegoatism style, we insist on knowing the entire truth. The fallout of that sordid episode is grave, with allegations of billions of naira and thousands of Permanent Voters Cards, PVCs, belonging to foreigners being discovered in certain quarters.
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This madness of removing Saraki through fair or foul means that has consumed the APC mindset and whatever inimical plots they weave must be checked before it sets this country on irreversible spin to disaster.
Nevertheless, the law of our land does not say that the senate president must be produced by the party with majority in the senate. It only says that senators will elect who their president should be from among themselves. Even talking about majority, is Oshiomhole really sure of the 53 APC senators he claims over PDP’s 49? He should wait until the senate reconvenes because judging by the way APC is losing members, he may be shocked by what awaits him.
Moreover, Karma never forgets. It is payback time for APC.
In 2014, Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, who was the speaker of the House of Representatives, dumped the PDP for APC and sent the House on recess for long. Among those who hailed him then was President Muhammadu Buhari, then a contender for the Presidency.
Said he: “We will like to thank Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal for what he did yesterday. We were overwhelmed…”
In 2018, Bukola Saraki, who is senate president, has dumped APC for PDP and sent the National Assembly on holidays. Strangely, APC would have none of it and has sworn to pull the country down if Saraki fails to reconvene and relinquish the senate presidency.
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“…You should not collect a crown that belongs to a family and wear it on behalf of the family; if for your personal reasons, which he has enumerated that he has gone to another family, it is just a matter of honour to leave the crown in the house that the crown belongs to,” Oshiomhole, vowing to forcefully remove Saraki from office.
He should, however, recall that Saraki’s presidency of the senate was orchestrated by the PDP, not by his then party, APC. So, claiming that Saraki had taken their crown away and should leave it in the house he left behind may not be exactly correct, as the ‘house’ gave him neither bead nor crown. It would be more plausible to think that PDP gifted their former member, Saraki, with the crown in the hope that he would bring it home some day. That is what he has done and no Gestapo braggadocio can retrieve it.
It is dishonourable to welcome Tambuwal to your house with the crown of another house, only to expect or insist that Saraki should not wear ‘yours’ in PDP, even though Saraki’s crown never belonged to APC.
Oh poor wretched nation, what can deliver you from this unsavoury ping pong of APC – PDP? Nigerians deserve better than these recycled deadwood, taking us nowhere; who would deliver us from this quagmire?