Senate President, Bukola Saraki,
has revealed the drama that preceded his election as the eight senate
leader, saying there was a plot to abduct him a day before the election,
while denying reports that he made a deal with the opposition to make Ike Ekweremadu his deputy.
In
an interview session with journalists on Saturday, June 27, Saraki
revealed that after he had gotten wind of the abduction plot, he changed
his itinerary by arriving the parliamentary car park at 6am on Senate
inauguration day, June 9. He said he stayed in his car until 10am, and then walked into the chamber.
Saraki
also refuted the rumour that the price he paid for his victory was for
the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) Senator Ike Ekweremadu to return
as the deputy Senate President, noting that the absence of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) senators in the chamber paved the way for
Ekweremadu’s emergence. “Never in our wildest imagination did we envisage that some senators would not be present on the day of the inauguration,” he said.
Speaking further, Saraki explained, “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.
“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.”
On Ekweremadu’s emergency as the 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.”
“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.”
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