When Aisha Buhari, the First Lady, gave a BBC interview in October in which she complained that a few persons around President Muhammadu Buhari had hijacked his government and were misleading him, many people in and outside government were shocked. Although many public officials and top politicians felt that she had spoken their mind, nobody dared corroborate what she said. The only exception was the Senate President, who, through Bamikole Omisore, his Special Assistant on New Media, expressed happiness and held that what Aisha said vindicated him. “It has become clear that there is a government within the government of President Buhari who have (sic) seized apparatus of executive powers to pursue their nefarious agenda”, Omisore said in a tweet.
As part of his efforts to push back at the relentless efforts by law enforcement agencies to punish him for alleged forgery as well as under and false declaration of assets, Saraki had earlier alleged that Buhari’s government had been seized by a cabal.
Nowadays, there is an unspoken rapprochement between President Muhammadu Buhari and another President in the Senate, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki. In this latter part of the year, the Senate led by Bukola Saraki has thrown out many submissions made to them by the Presidency – list of ambassadors, the $30 billion loan request, the Medium Term Expenditure framework (MTEF), etc. and also delayed and continues to delay confirmation hearings for some presidential appointees, including Ibrahim Magu of the EFCC.
Between November and now, the Senate President has met President Buhari no less than half a dozen times. Saraki has had one-on-one meetings with the President inside the Presidential Villa about three or four times. Recall also that when President Buhari went to Akure to inspire Oluwarotimi Akeredolu’s governorship campaign, it was Saraki that stood on his right.
Analysts believe that talks held between President Buhari and a group led by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, inside Aso Villa on Wednesday, 9th November, 2016, were encouraged by Saraki who rightly sensed that there existed a political chasm between this government and the South East. Saraki also felt that his deputy, being the highest political office holder from the South East, should break the ice between him and the President and lead the search for solution to the basic problems that bedevil that part of the country. At the end of the talks, Ekweremadu told newsmen that “we decided to visit the President and present to him some of the concerns of the South East including the issues of roads, general infrastructure, the rail and airports. We also discussed the issues of security with him and of course the issue of IPOB. We had a good conversation and he promised to look into the issues.”
Thereafter, many national newspapers followed up with the stories of how President Buhari intended to woo the South East with promises of executing capital projects ahead of 2019. I have always known that it is Buhari and not Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the unreliable son of the Igbos, that will fulfil the promises Nigeria made to those people. Hitherto, Ekweremadu had insinuated that some persons sympathetic to this government had tried to waylay and assassinate him.
It is also imaginable that one of the reasons the Buhari government’s request for foreign loans totalling $29.9 billion was rejected was because Senators from the South East had determined that there was nothing in there for their own part of the country.
Times have indeed changed; who would have thought that the Nigerian Senate would defer or dismiss President Buhari’s latest requests, one after the other? But that is exactly what has been happening and Saraki has lately been going to the Presidential Villa regularly to explain to the President why the Senate rejected this and that and how these requests could be re-packaged and subsequently represented for approval.
The Senate President has clearly made up with the President; the person in the cold now is the Jagaban Borgu, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Even the fresh report on forgery in the Senate said to be targeted at Saraki and Ekweremadu is being jettisoned and it is only a matter of time before the Code of Conduct Tribunal case against him is also killed.
On Friday, 2nd December, 2016, when the President and visiting King Mohammed VI of Morocco prayed Jumu’at at the national mosque in Abuja, again it was Bukola Saraki that was seen on his right side. A day earlier, Saraki’s protégé and former Minister of Sports, Bolaji Abdullahi, had been elected as the new spokesman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), replacing Alhaji Lai Mohammed.
Contrariwise, there is an increasing gulf between President Buhari and his ally, Bola Tinubu. The Jagaban was absent when Buhari went to Edo to campaign for Godwin Obaseki and he was also not there when the President stumped for Rotimi Akeredolu in Akure and despite his icy support, the APC candidate won. What the strategists around the villa, including Saraki, are telling the president is that Tinubu doesn’t have the impregnable hold on the South West politics that he wants people to believe and that elections can be won with or without his support. Worse still, Tinubu holds no formal office, never mind the high sounding title of national leader of the APC.
Saraki is free to bask in his new found amity with President Buhari. However, just like he worked an understanding between Ekweremadu and the President, Bukola should go to Bourdillon along with APC Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun and specially invite Bola Tinubu to Aso Presidential Villa so the four of them, including the President, can sit down and figure out how their government and the party can deliver on their promises to the people between now and May 2019. APC! Chanji!
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