Efforts by the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki,
to nip in the bud the crisis set off by the recent election
of the principal officers of the National Assembly may
have hit a brick wall.
The crisis of confidence which has pitted party leaders
of the All Progressives Congress against the new
principal officers of the National Assembly may take a
turn for the worse this week.
Contrary to the belief in several quarters, President
Muhammadu Buhari, who is widely believed to have
accepted the election of the principal officers as a fait
accompli, is said to be unhappy with the leadership of
the National Assembly.
Sources close to the two camps told our
correspondents that President Buhari and senior party
officials were still peeved that Saraki and other party
members defied the party and formed an alliance with
the former ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party.
The APC senators loyal to Saraki had on June 9
boycotted a peace meeting convened by Buhari and the
leadership of the party. The meeting, which was
attended by senators loyal to Senator Ahmad Lawan,
the APC’s official candidate for the position of the
Senate President, was going on when Saraki, with the
support of his loyalists in the APC and all the PDP
senators, emerged as the senate president unopposed.
Since then, the party has been in crisis, even though the
APC had said it would work with Saraki.
During the week, Saraki, paid a well publicised visit to
former President Olusegun Obasanjo. His aim, reports
say, was to seek the former president’s intervention in
the crisis. Saraki wanted Obasanjo to pacify the APC
leaders on his behalf. But Sunday PUNCH gathered that
the former president’s intervention has failed to yield
the results desired by Saraki and his camp.
It was gathered that shortly after Saraki’s visit to the
former president, Obasanjo made a telephone call to
Buhari advising him to make up with Saraki. The former
president had reportedly told the president to work with
Saraki and let the party deal with all the disciplinary
issues that the former governor of Kwara State had
been accused of. However, the President was said to
have been non-committal.
Sources privy to these happenings told our
correspondents that the telephone call initiated by
Obasanjo was not the first time the former president
would intervene in the matter. Sunday PUNCH reliably
gathered that Obasanjo had met with Buhari in South
Africa, last Sunday, and sought his help in resolving the
crisis in the ruling party. Sources said that the former
president, who was in Zambia for the 22nd annual
general meeting of the African Export-Import Bank, had
travelled from there to South Africa to meet with
President Buhari.
Speaking over the weekend, some senior party leaders
expressed doubts about the viability of Obasanjo’s
intervention. They told SUNDAY PUNCH in different
interviews that Saraki is an ally of former vice-
president Atiku Abubakar whom Obasanjo is not very
fond of.
One of them said, “It is not a secret that Atiku is
solidly behind Saraki. How the senate president thinks
Obasanjo will back any move by Atiku is what we don’t
understand. Atiku was the first person that Saraki
visited when he emerged as senate president. The ex-
president will definitely not turn Saraki back but deep in
his heart, he knows which camp he belongs to.”
But a source in the corridors of power told our
correspondent on the condition of anonymity that the
President’s response to pleas for his intervention had
remained the same.
Sources said while Buhari was careful not to make his
disappointment with Saraki public, he was very angry
that the senate president led a rebellion against his
party and also teamed up with the PDP to undermine
it. One other reason the crisis has remained intractable,
the source added, was the emergence of Senator Ike
Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate President.
“The President believes that Saraki earned the support
of the PDP because of the deputy senate presidency he
conceded to the opposition party. It is a treacherous
thing to do to one’s party,” the source said.
Buhari had reportedly shunned all moves by Saraki to
meet him before the senate president’s visit to
Obasanjo.
However, the Senior Special Assistant to the President
on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said
Buhari was not avoiding Saraki. Rather, he said, it was
the Senate President who is yet to visit the presidency.
When asked specifically when Saraki would be meeting
with the President, Shehu said it was left for the
President of the Senate to decide.
“There is no truth in the claims that the President does
not want to meet with any of the National Assembly
leaders. He has said that he respects institutions and
that strong men build institutions,” Garba said.
Our correspondents report that Saraki may be reluctant
to make an approach because he doesn’t want to be
rebuffed. A prominent member of the Like Minds
Senators, a group sympathetic to the senate president,
confirmed that Saraki had not fixed an appointment
with Buhari after meeting Obasanjo.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said, “After the
meeting with Obasanjo, there has been no specific move
on the part of the senate president to meet with Mr.
President. They will meet at the appropriate time.”
A senior APC official, who confided in SUNDAY PUNCH ,
said, “From all indications, all sides in the crisis are
maintaining their hard-line positions on the crisis. It
seems Saraki is not ready for reconciliation. His group
is insisting on its position. The Lawan group has given
its conditions for peace and the President believes that
there must be party discipline.”
Meanwhile, in a clear sign that the president may not
have a problem with the leadership of the House, Buhari
will be granting audience to the Speaker of the House
of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, this week.
The meeting, one of our correspondents learnt, is at the
instance of Dogara.
Shehu, confirmed Buhari’s meeting with Dogara. He
however declined to give details of the specific day on
which the meeting would hold.
“I have just gone through the President’s activities for
the week and I saw that Dogara is scheduled to meet
with him (the President) during the week,” Shehu said.
On his part, the spokesperson for the pro- Saraki group,
Senator Dino Melaye, said the senate president had
appeared before the party’s reconciliation committee.
He said, “The party set up a reconciliation committee
with the APC General Secretary as Chairman and Saraki
had appeared before the committee.”