By Alex Obiorah
It is no longer news that a new administration has been formed, in the aftermath of the last general elections. Whether the attendance at the inauguration ceremony showed wide acceptance of the new government would be a matter for another day. As would be expected, victorious politicians, mostly of the ruling All Progressives Congress, have taken to the dance floor, in celebration of another four years on the seat of power. Naturally, the losers would do some bit of sulking, following which, as democrats, they are expected to accept their fate with equanimity, and wait for another opportunity.
However, not a few enlightened persons have expressed worry at the dimension of hostility currently pervading the political hemisphere in Nigeria, under which the winners are threatening brimstone and fire, saying those who lost out in the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, specifically the defectors from the APC, would be dealt with, once President Buhari is inaugurated for a fresh four-year mandate.
Inescapably, embattled Senate President Bukola Abubakar Saraki is currently having a full dose of such threats from many APC top politicians who are trying to play the typical Man Friday to President Muhammadu Buhari. This, no doubt, is being carried out in a desperate effort to set the tone of vengeance against Saraki, for the President.
To these sundry traducers, Saraki had committed what was no more than grave sacrilege, to have hob-knobbed with the opposition and eventually dumped the APC, for his old party, the PDP. With Saraki’s defection, they felt he should have resigned his position as Senate President since the APC controlled the majority seat.
But unfazed, Saraki played on an even keel, refusing to bat an eyelid as he worked tirelessly; first, to grab the PDP presidential ticket, and later, to ensure the victory of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the party’s presidential candidate.
But all, one would have thought, is now history, especially for the fact that Buhari, the sitting president, had secured the needed victory to rule for another four years. However, like a delirious Billy goat at his heat, the nanny goat will never be spared. Saraki’s enemies now have a field day, as they capitalise on the denouement of the Senate President’s political exploration, which has turned out o be roundly unfavourable.
In the first place, Atiku, Saraki’s candidate, lost the presidential election. Further to the dampener, Saraki, the human personification of Kwara politics, and the scion of the late Senator Olusola Saraki’s political dynasty of Kwara, lost in his bid to return to the Senate. Not enough, the shocker unfurled Saraki, a governor for eight years and one who installed a successor for eight years, being unable to perform the magic again. But taking all in his strides, a suave, urbane and mature Saraki beamed with smiles, and even went on to describe his political misfortune as one of the beauties of democracy.
Curiously, however, rather than for his political opponents to learn from such unusual candour and give him a thump-up, they have now hit the market square with the tar brush, wanting to paint Saraki red. Acting as the self-acclaimed mouthpiece of the President, they are gallivanting around, saying Saraki would be sent to the gallows or that he would rot in jail, once Buhari is inaugurated for another tenure.
Assuredly, those who have reduced Saraki to a farmland thief simply because of his political misfortune and are now asking for his crucifixion, may have forgotten that same Saraki had been buffeted with what can now be safely described as persecution, shortly after he won the in-house election to become Senate President. The party had not zoned the position to him, but through some political wizardry, he secured the seat.
Soon after that victory, he was assailed with charges of false declaration of assets at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. In the final analysis, however, Saraki came out with a clean bill of health, right up to the Supreme Court.
That Saraki wangled his way to the Senate Presidency is no crime in politics, anywhere, as the unspoken name of the game is scheming, and nothing, but scheming.
Rather than now capitalise on what is perceived to be his vulnerability with the aim of wrecking him in whatever form, what Saraki and his fellow senators deserve from Nigerians now is a review of their performance at the upper chamber of the legislative arm, in the past four years. On this slate, not a few persons will score Saraki high, especially for powering a fairly independent Senate, away from the era of ‘yes man legislature’. In that era, lawmakers who should serve to check the excesses of the Executive arm were mere rubber-stamps.
A reference in point on the independence of the Saraki Senate was how the senators threatened to invoke the impeachment rule against President Buhari, if he failed to stem the tide of herdsmen killings and other terrorist acts in the country.
The Senate under Saraki also passed over 146 bills and brought plausible amendments to the Constitution, via bill passage. To further help the Federal Government to smoothen the modus operandi of the Treasury Single Account it introduced at the early stage of the administration, the Saraki-led Senate put up a probe into the operation of the TSA, which revealed fraudulent acts in a system that was actually meant to check fraud! In the final analysis, the Federal Government was saved from losing as much as N25 billion to light-fingered characters in the public and banking sectors.
Same way, in May 2016, Saraki’s Senate uncovered a N447 billion fraud in the import duty waivers scheme on rice, prompting it to direct the Ad-hoc Committee on Import Duty Waivers to investigate the heist.
Was it not the same Saraki Senate that mandated the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission to immediately abolish fixed charges on electricity consumption and bulk metering of communities, describing it as contrary to the interest of the public whom those in power had sworn on oath to protect?
This short take on Saraki’s many achievements is not intended to lionise him or present him as a saint. It is basically to correct the political attitude prevalent in Nigeria, in which politicians settle political scores with uncouth vengeance, vendetta, and seething paranoia. You hardly hear of such in the western world, where politics is all about service and not anything near personal estate.
Therefore, as we look on the Buhari administration to meet the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerian masses, and as the nation gets set for the activities on the 9th Senate, I would like to say Congratulations to Saraki for leading one of the most productive Senates in Nigeria’s history. While I implore the 9th Senate to build on the 8th Senate’s achievements, I would advise the opposition, or government for that matter, to let Saraki be. Politics should be a healthy game!
Obiorah, an engineer, lives in Asaba, Delta State
