17 days after his election,
Senator Bukola Saraki, yesterday, opened up on the controversial poll, saying
those in opposition to him planned to abduct him to prevent him from emerging
as Senate President.
Saraki disclosed that, on
Tuesday, June 9, Senate inauguration day, following information he got of the
abduction plot to keep him off the National Assembly, he altered his schedule
by arriving the parliament car park at 6am, stayed in his car and then trekked
at quarter to 10am into the chamber.
He dismissed the insinuation that
for him to win, he entered into a pact with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
for Senator Ike Ekweremadu to be produced as his deputy, just as he stressed
that the absence of All Progressives Congress, APC, senators in the chamber
paved the way for the emergence of Ekweremadu.
The Senate President, who noted
that the emergence of Ekweremadu will make things difficult for him, said,
“Never in our wildest imagination did we envisage that some senators would not
be present on the day of the inauguration.”
Speaking with journalists, in
Abuja, Saraki insisted that he never got any message to attend a meeting at the
International Conference Centre (ICC) with President Muhammadu Buhari on the
Senate inauguration day. “First of all, as regards the meeting (at ICC), on the
morning of the inauguration, I didn’t finish at a meeting until 4:00am of that
day and I had got information that efforts would likely be made to make sure
that I didn’t get access into the chamber”, he said.
The Senate President narrated
further: “So, as early as 4:00am and 5:00am, I had made contingency plans that
I must get into the National Assembly because the plan before was that
senators-elect should go to Transcorp Hilton Hotel around 8:00clock and 9:00am
to proceed to the National Assembly.
“But I was advised that it would
not be safe or it would not be secure for me to do that because if some people
made sure I didn’t get into the chamber, it would not be possible for me to be
nominated, for the nomination to be seconded and for me to accept the
nomination.
“I can tell you today that I was
in the National Assembly Complex as early as 6:00 in the morning and I stayed
in a car in the car park till quarter to 10:00am. That is the truth. I stayed
there and I was there with no communication whatsoever.
“So, anybody who said he spoke to
me to go to the ICC was not being truthful because I didn’t even know what was
going on. All I was monitoring was how people were arriving the complex.
“It was just before 10:00 that I
got information that the Clerk to the National Assembly had entered the
chamber. So, I got out of the small car I was inside, stretched myself and put
on my Babariga because I didn’t have it on before then.
“I walked from the car park into
the chamber. That was why some of you would have seen that I looked very tired
that morning.
“Even when I was in the chamber,
I didn’t know what had transpired earlier. The only thing I observed was that
it appeared that some of our senators were not in the chamber, but because the
fact that my colleagues arrived in batches, I had the opinion that they were on
the way and, by 10:00am, the programme started.
“Before I knew it, my election
had come and gone. Even my people were worried; it was only when I got into the
chamber that they were relieved.”
Speaking on the emergence of
Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President, Saraki said, “In my own view, and, in
the view of some of those who worked closely with me, I worked hard for my
election. I had direct contact with every single senator, one on one; weeks
leading to the election, I did not rely on anybody. I worked hard; both in our
party, the APC and out of it.
“I approached every senator, I
talked to them, we built confidence, not only in the APC, but, also, in the
PDP. I talked to them. That was why I laughed when people said I had a deal
with Ekweremadu or I had a hand in the emergence of Ekweremadu.
“I didn’t need any deal to win. I
had penetrated, there was no deal; I didn’t need any deal in the first place. I
had worked hard such that everybody who was a Senator, I campaigned hard and
canvassed for their votes and won their confidence.
“At one of the meetings held at
Transcorp Hilton which Senator Godswill Akpabio co-chaired with Senator Ibrahim
Gobir and a few others, which had both APC and PDP members, if you heard most
of them there, the position they took was that ‘this is the Senate President
they want.’
“Across party lines, that day
they believed in me and that this is the Senate President that can lead us,
there was no deal.
“Sometimes, I wonder how some of
our colleagues found themselves at the ICC. If it had been a case that the
Clerk of the National Assembly had made an announcement and the event had been
postponed or it was no longer holding, plus, the invitation, I’m sure some are
asking now, what really happened?
“First of all, the PDP senators
had announced to the public that they were supporting me without even meeting
me because, in their own meeting, majority had decided to vote for me.
“In their own interest,
strategically, they decided that, `look, this is a fait accompli’ because 30 of
their own senators were going to vote for this man anyway and the remaining
felt it was better to join.
“It wasn’t until 2:00am that they
called us to tell us their decision. With regards to the deputy, when they told
us that they had a candidate, we, too, told them we had a candidate for Deputy
Senate President in the person of Senator Ali Ndume!
“After our own meeting, it was
our thinking that it was after the election of the Senate President that the
two groups in APC would meet and we would agree on a candidate. We never in our
imagination thought they would not turn up. By the time we got there, we were
only 24 while the PDP was more than 40.
“In an election, there’s no way
they would not have defeated us and that was what happened? And now, when
people say it was a deal, I say that if the CNA had started the procedure in
the House of Representatives first, and moved to the Senate, thereafter, today,
we, the APC, would have had a deputy Senate President.”
Speaking further on the election
of Ekweremadu, the Senate President said: “It is unfortunate that we have a PDP
man as deputy Senate President. It is painful. It is painful for every APC
member because when we went through the struggle that was not what we signed
for. But it has happened; but it is unfortunate and it is not fair to put the
blame on one side because it is a combination of errors and miscalculations
that led us to have, that morning, some Senators were at another place instead
of being there.
“So, to suggest that it was out
of a desperate act to emerge is what I reject completely and those who followed
the events would know that I didn’t have that deal to emerge.”
When asked to speak on his
rumoured ambition for 2019 presidency, Saraki noted that there were enough
challenges confronting the country and not 2019, adding that those talking
about the election at the moment could be described as irresponsible.
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