http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/08/bukola-saraki-in-maiduguri-tentative-first-steps-for-2019-presidency/

ON Monday this week, Bukola Saraki led a team of his closest senate collaborators on a visit to Maiduguri. Any rookie political analyst could have seen through the stage-managed trip, given the near-presidential halo around it, with hands pumping, photo ops with IDPs and a visit to the Shehu of Borno. On Tuesday morning, most newspapers carried a syndicated picture of the ‘august visitor’ waving to the IDPs. Never before in the history of Nigeria’s transition to civil rule since 1999, have we had a senate president determined to seize the public space like Bukola Saraki.

Soon after he controversially snubbed his party to emerge, he began to hold court, receiving visitors, issuing statements and for all intents and purposes, wrestling limelight with Muhammadu Buhari, elected as President, with the executive powers that go with it. But determined to defy the controversy around his emergence, Bukola Saraki is seizing political territory and desperately attempting to control the space of public perception as much as possible.

His ultimate goal remains presidency and he can’t even wait for 2019 before beginning to show his hands. The Maiduguri visit is the first attempt at testing the waters with a toe, and more such visits will come in the near future.

But there are serious problems that Bukola Saraki continues confronting from the moment he opened the Pandora’s Box and in a manner of speaking, letting the genie out of the bottle, that morning of June 9th, 2015. He is fighting a battle against public perception because in many quarters in Nigeria, he has not been able to live down the feeling that he betrayed his party.

Bukola Saraki remains defiant and continues to ignore the APC and PMB’s openly expressed preference that APC senators bow to party supremacy; he fills positions with members of his own group, daring the party and PMB to do the worst!

Yet, he is deeply worried that so far, he has not been able to secure an audience with President Muhammadu Buhari. He took desperacy to a ridiculous height on Sallah day; refused to go for prayers in Ilorin, but rushed to Abuja Eid praying ground for a photo opportunity with PMB. He got a short shrift by being publicly ignored! The depth of his despair was made clear in an article published by many newspapers at the weekend, and written by Saraki’s Media Special Adviser, Yusuph Olaniyonu.

Titled “Let the lawmakers move on and work for Nigeria”, Olaniyonu expressing his principal’s troubled mind, stated that: “The President should maintain his earlier position not to get involved in legislative politics…

A way to send the right signal that he is ready to help the National Assembly build on the new found unity is for the President to now OPENLY MEET AND RELATE WITH THE LEADERSHIP OF BOTH CHAMBERS (my emphasis)”. So as is his wont, Bukola Saraki defied the APC, blatantly ignored PMB’s perspective but expects that this issue be resolved in his favour as a fait accompli.

And the fact that he was not allowed on the presidential entourage to the US visit also hurt him deeply and this was expressly stated by Olaniyonu: “We need to put behind us the past experience in which the President travelled to the United States for crucial bi-lateral discussion on several issues without any member of the legislature. That was an opportunity missed to give legislative backing to executive engagements”. But we know better. Angst was being directed at the fact that Bukola Saraki missed the photo-op with President Barack Obama.

It was therefore no surprise, when reports emerged this week that a very worried Bukola Saraki, unable to secure an audience with PMB, was corralling the Emir of Ilorin to service to find every opportunity for him to get to see the president.

There are also relatedly desperate efforts to press other traditional rulers into the same engagement. What should not be lost to Nigerians in all the developments is that while desperate to get a presidential audience, he nevertheless continues to defy the same president and party in respect of the extant problems arising from his demarche on June 9th.

Presidential election
The positions playing out are very complex but there is a consistent pattern. Firstly, for all intents and purposes, Bukola Saraki has finished with the APC. But he will stay in the party for as long as possible to suck into his camp as many members as he can before finally returning to the PDP, where he hopes to become the candidate for the 2019 presidential election. Does this sound farfetched? It does not! Last week, in the wake of the invitation issued to Toyin, Bukola Saraki’s wife by the EFCC, it was revealed that petition acted upon, had been filed by the PDP branch in Kwara state.

What followed next was that the national PDP leadership through Olisah Metuh directed Kwara PDP to disown the petition, because, according to Metuh, they were working for Bukola Saraki’s return to the PDP! It could not be any clearer. And the logic of Bukola Saraki’s defiance of APC and President Muhammadu Buhari, makes it impossible for him to stay inside the APC in the long run. Consumed by his presidential ambition, that logic will lead to a denouement that will eventually arrive, as political events unfold in the next couple of months and years in the country.

Chapter of a personal agenda
When he entered into the agreement that returned Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President, he consciously chose to trade away the Nigerian people’s desire for change on the platform of the APC. He had finished using SAK and the slogan of CHANGE and was now embarking on the next chapter of his own personal agenda for presidency, as early as in 2019. Bukola Saraki and his followers deliberately reduced calls for party supremacy, to Bola Tinubu’s ambition to control everything in the APC. So many of those who used that platform to win positions that they would ordinarily NEVER have, became foot soldiers of Bukola Saraki’s ambition within the APC, especially in the North.

So instead of working to further enhance the North-Southwest alliance, these shortsighted and opportunistic Northern politicians who bought into Bukola Saraki’s anti-Tinubu propaganda endanger PMB’s CHANGE Agenda and willy-nilly, have become as disruptive as Bukola Saraki and are working for his personal agenda NOT the interest of Northern Nigeria or those of our country, in the long run. The vicious propaganda onslaught against Bola Tinubu was actually an onslaught at the individual who played the most vital role in building an alliance with PMB and who together became the champions of a North-Southwest accord that won power for the first time in our nation’s political history.

In the long run, their agenda is really not against Bola Tinubu, but it is just the opening salvo in a targeted onslaught by Bukola Saraki and his political tendency within the APC, against President Muhammadu Buhari. That will come to the fore as we approach 2019!

By getting Ike Ekweremadu into the loop as Deputy Senate President, and contrary to the norms of Senate in respect of ranking, also making Godswill Akpabio Minority leader, Bukola Saraki will claim his political IOU in 2019.

He will posture as having given the Southeast and the South-South recognition and platforms of relevance, when they ordinarily would have lost out in 2015, for voting against the APC and PMB. Secondly, he would calculate that his chances are very bright as PDP’s presidential candidate in 2019, because given the current political reality, the PDP will most likely be obliged to present a Northern candidate to run against PMB.

Appointment of legislative aides
That is why Bukola Saraki has been appointing legislative aides from different parts of the North and beyond who would easily and seamlessly make the transition into becoming his campaign coordinators in different parts of the North and beyond! This is the most logical background that puts his various steps into context: defiance of the party to run against the party’s candidate; entering into an alliance with the PDP, and thus bringing it back into the loop of legislative leadership even when Nigerians had rejected the party at the polls and had expressly accepted the slogan of CHANGE; continuing to make appointments that suit his own personal agenda not those of the party; ignoring President Muhammadu Buhari and doing everything to contest the space of public visibility with PMB and carrying on as if he is an alternative president of Nigeria, based in the senate!

These steps are carefully thought out and that is the way he will continue to act in the lead to 2019! So when the APC leadership insists that the senate leadership toes the party line and PMB appeals to the morality and conscience of the Bukola Saraki group in senate, we can only wonder where their naivety comes from.

There is no moral suasion that will take Bukola Saraki’s eye off the ball of his personal agenda. For him, senate presidency is merely a stepping-stone to Nigeria’s presidency. If they doubt this, they should visit my hometown Ilorin, where this has been regularly drummed into the heads of the local people:”Bukola is not interested in the ‘Number Three’ position; he wants Presidency”! That is the propaganda in Ilorin. So when Bukola Saraki entered Maiduguri this week, he was taking the first tentative step into the very muddy and murky waters on the route to the 2019 presidential elections.

Humanitarian trip for succour
Of course, that was not the way that the trip was presented; on the contrary, it was supposedly a humanitarian trip to give succour to people displaced as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency.

He will lull his opponents to underestimating the essence of his scheming until it becomes too late for them to effectively respond. One of Bukola Saraki’s greatest strengths is a single-minded and ruthless devotion to anything that confers him advantage.

There are very few real politicians on the Nigerian political scene today, but in his total commitment to his personal agendas, no one can trump Bukola Saraki today in Nigerian politics. That is what makes him formidable and a danger at the same time! So when PMB and his advisers analyse the political space, they must reckon with Bukola Saraki’s unrelenting and formidable ambition to become president as soon as 2019.
If they treat that challenge with levity, they would certainly have another thing coming! They will become easy prey for a calculating and politically astute Bukola Saraki!

Cc: lalasticala, ishilove, obinoscopy

what a read.

Another prophecy prophesied
Firstly, for all intents and purposes, Bukola Saraki has finished with the APC. But he will stay in the party for as long as possible to suck into his camp as many members as he can before finally returning to the PDP, where he hopes to become the candidate for the 2019 presidential election. Does this sound farfetched? It does not!

I don book my space. But it also for sale

UPDATED: Like the bot above me I think he's just bidding his time; the presidency has always been his "final destination"/end-game. In fact, I am also "prophesying" a Saraki/Ekweremadu PDP ticket in 2019, though it'll be Dead On Arrival.

Cool

Conspiracy theories on the loose,let Saraki be.

Well, in my opinion he's a joker coz PMB (God spare his life) will first complete 8 fruitful years to sanitize this country.

By getting Ike Ekweremadu into the loop as Deputy Senate President, and contrary to the norms of Senate in respect of ranking, also making Godswill Akpabio Minority leader, Bukola Saraki will claim his political IOU in 2019.

He will posture as having given the Southeast and the South-South recognition and platforms of relevance, when they ordinarily would have lost out in 2015, for voting against the APC and PMB. Secondly, he would calculate that his chances are very bright as PDP’s presidential candidate in 2019, because given the current political reality, the PDP will most likely be obliged to present a Northern candidate to run against PMB.

He has a nice plan...... But this plan will work if Buhari do not perform which is close to impossible...... Or if Buhari refuse to contest which is impossible because he'll perform excellently...... or if PDP rig the election in his favour as they did in the Senate.... They couldn't even do it successfully for Jonathan therefore it's out of it.

I've more chance of being the President than Saraki will ever be.

Good luck to Bukola in his ambition, though I doubt his current party (APC) will allow him run for the presidency on their platform. But then he can always decamp to the PDP where he will most likely get the ticket.

Wait till then!

Chasing the wins

@ INTROVERT, a prophesy indeed.

But this is kind of a Disneyland prophecy

The probability of it happening in reality is so infinitesimal.

Bukola should forget presidency....His father tried too but to no avail.

All these rich boys that do not know that people are suffering. His antecedents in SGN, Kwara and as a senator is well known...

Four person who can never be Nigeria's president unless Nigerians go to sleep on election day: Babangida, Tinubu, Atiku and Saraki.

Two of them have understood and accepted that fact: Babangida and Tinubu.

Two refuse to accept that fact: Atiku and Saraki.

Nigerians are becoming wiser by each passing day.

The sooner Atiku and Saraki get it into their thick political skulls that they can never be president the better for them. Best option is to position themselves as strategic polical godfathers like Tinubu and Babangida.

BTW, there is a saying that "politicians think of the next election while leaders think of the next generation".

Nigerians make una shine ya eyez!!!

Cc: lalasticala, ishilove, obinoscopy. Front Page

Saraki is playing politics but he forgets that the South West will not accept him on any level. Look, the average SW voter is a very vengeful one and he will lash out in 2019 should Saraki contest for presidency.

I doubt no one is looking at why the SW slot for the principal officers in the senate has not been filled....simply put, no SW senator (APC) wants to commit political suicide by jumping ship(Ask Obanikoro, Femi Pedro, Agbaje and Osoba). Lasun will tell the tale when they start with him in Osun

If President Buhari decides to contest in 2019, as Luvmijeje has said, the only way he won't win is if he does not perform(highly implausible) if he does not contest, you are looking at the APC throwing a Rochas or Ngige. Which the SW will support.

Saraki only has Kwara, most of the North will still queue behind President Buhari and whoever he throws. Bottom line, Saraki having the SS and SE is inconsequential as the SW and states like Gombe, Plateau, Nassarawa which GEJ had banked on won't support him.

Then there is the issue of the NW which can do damage to any politician. Saraki should forget this zone forever as he has to contend with Kwankwaso, Buhari and Sanusi in terms of popularity, all of who are keeping away from him

ModiKen:
Four person who can never be Nigeria's president unless Nigerians go to sleep on election day: Babangida, Tinubu, Atiku and Saraki.

Two of them have understood and accepted that fact: Babangida and Tinubu.

Two refuse to accept that fact: Atiku and Saraki.

Nigerians are becoming wiser by each passing day.

The sooner Atiku and Saraki get it into their thick political skulls that they can never be president the better for them. Best option is to position themselves as strategic polical godfathers like Tinubu and Babangida.

BTW, there is a saying that "politicians think of the next election while leaders think of the next generation"

Nigerians make una shine ya eyez!!!

The bolded is the problem with Saraki and Atiku. They need to grab more Tha states and grab regions. Look at Kwankwaso and Tinubu. They don't need to make noise or jump around but you feel the support they have and when they talk, millions move.

I think Kwankwaso, Fashola or Ngige will be the next president.

Mynd44:

The bolded is the problem with Saraki and Atiku. They need to grab more Tha states and grab regions. Look at Kwankwaso and Tinubu. They don't need to make noise or jump around but you feel the support they have and when they talk, millions move.

I think Kwankwaso, Fashola or Ngige will be the next president.

I would have to disagree with u on Kwankwaso.

He did well for the people of Kano but his statements sell him out as a Northern bigot and you know that would be bad for a fragile country like Nigeria.

Baba Fash, the best option, next Ngige (but I wonder if his people the Igbos would give him a chance)

ModiKen:


I would have to disagree with u on Kwankwaso.

He did well for the people of Kano but his statements sell him out as a Northern bigot and you know that would be bad for a fragile country like Nigeria.

Baba Fash, the best option, next Ngige (but I wonder if his people the Igbos would give him a chance)

On Kwankwaso, not if he has support of the political leaders from the SW behind him. People threw more dirt from President Buhari and people still told them to go to hell.

It is a matter of looking at what he has done for Kano and people knowing he might be going for president, he is not going to make the decisions alone.

As for Ngigie, he might/might not get SE votes but he will do better than President Buhari did in the SE. The SW is as good as APC and the North will still follow the President

As for Fashola, that is a death blow for the PDP.

Miscalculation. He can try but it won't fly.

Saraki is going nowhere. 2019 my foot.

I wait for those that will say the SS and SE are behind Saraki. They need to remember President Jonathan.

Heck, if Saraki is not careful, he wont occupy that seat until 2019.

Give me a Fashola or Nasir El-Rufai... Combination of both Atiku and Saraki cannot beat any of this Guyz...

Mynd44:

On Kwankwaso, not if he has support of the political leaders from the SW behind him. People threw more dirt from President Buhari and people still told them to go to hell.

It is a matter of looking at what he has done for Kano and people knowing he might be going for president, he is not going to make the decisions alone.

As for Ngigie, he might/might not get SE votes but he will do better than President Buhari did in the SE. The SW is as good as APC and the North will still follow the President

As for Fashola, that is a death blow for the PDP.

Anybody Buhari support is more like the President-in-Waiting....

Mynd44:

The bolded is the problem with Saraki and Atiku. They need to grab more Tha states and grab regions. Look at Kwankwaso and Tinubu. They don't need to make noise or jump around but you feel the support they have and when they talk, millions move.

I think Kwankwaso, Fashola or Ngige will be the next president.

Ngige? Seriously? A man who lost gubernatorial and senatorial election.

luvmijeje:


Ngige? Seriously? A man who lost gubernatorial and senatorial election.

The APC might want to support a SE candidate. Rochas and Ngige will have to fight it out if it comes to that

but Why do Nigerians fall for cheap news, sponsored by unless agents to heat the polity

Mynd44:

The APC might want to support a SE candidate. Rochas and Ngige will have to fight it out if it comes to that

They might want to do that for the post of Vice-president but not President. If they decide to go that route I'll prefer Okorocha.

Until their leaders start coming out to condemn the politics of hatred being perpetrated in the region it will remain elusive because that seat is too powerful and too sensitive in the hands of those that will use it as a means of revenge.

Happiness87:
but Why do Nigerians fall for cheap news, sponsored by unless agents to heat the polity

Lol @ the bolded. Would you have preferred "expensive" news instead? Truth is, this suspicion has always been there, especially since Saraki assumed his office without his party's blessings. This news report only reinforces that suspicion.

AshiwajuFoward:


Lol @ the bolded. Would you have preferred "expensive" news instead? Truth is, this suspicion has always been there, especially since Saraki assumed his office without his party's blessings. This news report only reinforces that suspicion.

if the party is not on his side, how will he get their support to contest??
stop allowing APC media mules to masturbate your brains.

The working governor. https://www.nairaland.com/2505247/abia-government-opens-up-blocked

Happiness87:
if the party is not on his side, how will he get their support to contest??
stop allowing APC media mules to masturbate your brains.

Contest as what exactly? As Senator or Senate president? Everyone knows he wasn't his party's preferred candidate for the SP position. He won't be SP today were it not for the PDP -- Fact.

I think Saraki is still enjoying the public space because of the absence of PMB's cabinet.By the time the team is fully formed and real action begins,Saraki will be begging for attention.More importantly, APC leaders are still evasive concerning the treachery of Saraki,trust them to serve him appropriately when the time is ripe!....like they say.the masquarade wey display first,na look he go look last last