President Muhammadu Buhari’s ascension to power on May 29 this year has since been chronicled by many as an incident of fate. To scores of others, however, it was the product of dogged commitment to goal attainment, even when all hopes seemed lost – a commitment that demanded stooping low to conquer and the swallowing of bitter pills. But apart from the challenges of a comatose economy, run-away corruption and insurgency, a good guess is that nothing as yet has rattled and rankled Buhari’s Presidency and the top hierarchy of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the coalition of roughly four political parties on which crest the APC rode to power as the irritating emergence of the leadership of the Senate. Incidentally, too, they seem not to have accepted the ‘triumph of Saraki’ as fate-driven.
While basking in the euphoria of victory, the APC and Presidency probably took for granted the fact that what came together to form the party were more or less strange bedfellows whose ambitions, predilections and perfidies were not just inexhaustible, but were as unpredictable as the harmattan rain. Not surprisingly, personal interest, as against the corporate wishes of the ruling APC, took over when the leaderships of the two houses of the National Assembly were inaugurated on June 9, 2015. The physical manifestation of the mongering for power for strictly selfish reasons are the sitting Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, purported to be a member of the APC, as well as Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a veteran on the job, though still sitting tight.
Since Saraki and Ekweremadu took over the mantle of Senate leadership, the nation has been, and may still be regaled with intrigues without bounds between the APC and the ‘errant’ NASS leadership. We, for instance, do not believe that the Monday July 6, 2015 invitation extended by the Nigeria Police Force to Ekweremadu for the purpose of clarifications on alleged alteration of Senate rules used to conduct the election that produced Saraki and himself as leaders of the senate was not tendentious. We hold the same view about the recent questioning for about six hours by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of wife of the Senate President, Mrs. Toyin Saraki, about contracts executed in Kwara State when her husband was governor between 2003 and 2011. By the same token, the Saraki-led Senate may not be speaking with all candour if it insists that the upper legislature’s investigation of EFCC Chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde, over allegations bordering on his misappropriation of N1 trillion of looted but recovered funds, was borne out of patriotism. Neither is Buhari administration’s intolerance of corrupt public officers. Grand political schemings they all might have been.
But the most ridiculous, perhaps, would be the order given to the Nigeria Police Force by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) to arrest the controversial Senate President, Saraki. Saraki was accused of making false and anticipatory assets declaration on assumption of office as the Executive Governor of Kwara State in 2003. The CCT, sitting in Abuja last Friday, issued a bench warrant for his arrest on the strength of the said charges exhumed several years after the man served as governor. That the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and its sister, the CCT, both of which have portrayed themselves literally as deaf and dumb castrated wolves before now, could bounce unceremoniously to reckoning, perhaps in the Buhari spirit against corruption, is indeed to the credit of the two organisations. Suspect, however, is the choice of the case they chose to debut with. It may be extremely difficult, for example, for the CCB and CCT to convince Nigerians that their decision to prosecute Saraki is not blemished by politics, given some of the issues already raised here. We, therefore, frankly advise the CCB and CCT to wait for a more auspicious time to sort out their grouses, if they have any, with Saraki.
The game of politics is about winning or losing. Politics should be left for the politically witty and resilient. The judiciary should not encourage what appears the impunity preference of those that hate Saraki’s guts and face. They should find better options to beat the tortoise and its tricks; and in such ways that do not insult Nigerians’ intelligence or court public rage. Indeed, the APC and President Buhari should avoid situations that might cast them in the mould of that proverbial glutton carrying a cow on its head, but was using its legs to hunt for crickets.
