₦airaland Forum

Saraki’s Implosion: A Shameful Public Servant by Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu


BY EMMANUEL UCHENNA UGWU SEP 25, 2015

It’s blindingly obvious that the Bukola Saraki who was docked at the Code of Conduct Tribunal in Abuja on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015 is weakened, diminished and reduced to a hollow husk. His stint as Senate President has become politically untenable and morally intolerable. But rather than embracing this fact of life, he seems resolved to fight it.

And so for a while, Saraki resisted the invitation to enter the accused box. He saw the accused box as a proper coffin. He reckoned that if he stepped into that container and stayed in it, he would have actively participated in his own funeral. However, it was too late. He was already fatally wounded even before he was boxed.

Saraki had ruined himself by pursuing the fantasy of living a virtually impossible incongruence: He wanted to become the Senate President while being Bukola Saraki. Saraki highlighted this when he protested: ‘’I am a firm believer of the rule of law. I have come here to subject myself before this tribunal. I strongly believe that I am here because I am the Senate President.’’

When Dr. Saraki intuited that ’’ I am here because I am Senate President,’’ he made a correct self-diagnosis. But, he was still strangely unaware of the vein of truth that ran beneath his remonstration.

Saraki was trying to allude to political persecution. He had intended to assert that the charges of false assets declaration and anticipatory assets declaration filed against him were a mere pretext to punish him. He figured that the Presidency was bullying him for daring to become the President of the Senate.

Unbeknownst to Saraki, his ‘’I am here because I am Senate President’’ captures the real reason of his travail: Which is that he tried to be Senate President... while being Saraki!

Saraki, indeed, chose the most inopportune time to launch himself into national limelight. It should have been clear to him that he would be unable to survive.

Saraki, by the virtue of being Saraki, a living museum of baggage, should have never have attempted to vie for Senate President. He should have known that the burden of scrutiny would crumble him.

The siren of ambition drove Saraki. He wanted to be Senate President, the third most powerful man in Nigeria. But the crisis he failed to anticipate was the natural character comparison that would result from his proximity to the upright duo of Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osibanjo in the power echelon.

‘’Senate President Bukola Saraki’’ is a proper oxymoron. The merger of the position of Senate President and person of Bukola Saraki represents a conflicted tension of meanings. His pathetic demeanor since he became Senate President Saraki shows that the title and the man coexist in mutual attrition.

If Saraki were to resign today, he would be doing himself a favor.

Saraki has always labored under the illegitimacy of his ‘’emergence.” His Senate Presidency was conjured out of forged Senate rules and a flawed procedural format. Also, reinforcing the scam, is the fact that he was elected ‘’unopposed’’ in an exercise where half of his colleagues, members of his own political party, were bodily absent.

To date, half of the Senate membership considers him as an impostor. Half of the people he is supposed to be leading are in court, challenging the validity of his claim to be the ‘’Senate President.”

Saraki is not embarrassed by the contempt of half of his House. He carries on, even though the eighth Senate remains stuck in the strictures of his emergence. Apparently, the status of the Senate President, or its close approximation - pretender to the seat of the Senate President - matters more to him than the requisite credibility capital needed to do the job.

Saraki has been playing the nominal part of the Senate President – answering to the title of the Nigerian parliament, sitting on the lofty chair during the Senate session and hitting the gavel, but in reality he has been no more than an infatuated mother rocking the cradle of her stillborn:

His Senate Presidency and Senate never really begun. Much worse than that, his Senate and his Senate Presidency may never ever begin.

Saraki seems incapable of winning the respect of a sizeable number of his colleagues and of procuring the promise of their tolerance of his person. He seems to emit an aura that they find abominably repulsive.

Now, the Nigerian Senate is not the congregation of honest people. In fact, it has – almost as a default configuration – a quota of characters that represent the cream of criminality. Today’s Senate boasts a pedophile (Sani Yerima) and a fugitive drug baron (Buruji Kashamu) as ‘’distinguished’’ members. The makeup of Saraki’s Senate is not much different from the one that had prompted ex-Deputy Inspector General of Police, the late Nuhu Aliyu, to lament, in the midst of a plenary session, that he was forced to share camaraderie with the fraudsters he investigated while in service.

Saraki, from his central role in bankrupting his daddy’s bank to his two terms as Governor of Kwara State, had accumulated a streak of blemishes that makes him an anathema.

The measure of the man’s complexity is that his present distress could grow worse. He is a mine that has only been shallowly researched. He remains a promising ‘’The More You Look, The More You See’’ prospect.

Saraki is possessed of the delusion that he can wait this Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) saga out. He believes that if he stays resilient, the storm will fade eventually. And he will convalesce from the nightmare strong and ready to win the Presidency in 2019!

Saraki has always wanted to be President. He has come close to it as the Senate President, the number three man. He reasons it would be easier to snatch the ultimate seat from this vantage spot.

This is hoping against hope. The reality is that his days in national prominence have expired.

On June 9, 2015, Saraki – according to the horse’s own mouth – ingeniously smuggled himself into the National Assembly Complex at 6.00 am and hibernated at the car park, a clear four hours ahead of the scheduled commencement of the inauguration of the eighth Senate.

If Saraki has lost his understanding of the time and a sense of propriety, I am glad to do the charity of alerting him: It’s high time he resigned!

The thirteen count charges against him and his tangential conjugal culpability in his wife’s alleged fraudulent conduct as First Lady of Kwara State have effectively obliterated any vestige of Saraki’s fitness for office. He just can’t continue in his present post.

As a public servant, Saraki needs to exit the Office of the President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria without delay. In his current position, Saraki has become public nuisance, a shameful cynosure.

His continued association with the headship of the legislative arm of Nigeria pu forths his battle with the law on the screen of national cinema. And this compels the whole nation to watch the plague metastasize in the news cycle.

We need a break from Saraki’s intrusive movie. We can’t keep on watching the saturation coverage of the criminal trial of the ‘’Senate President.” He needs to separate himself from that title and sort himself out. An entire nation cannot continue to pay him the tribute of compulsory attention.

Even if he doesn’t care about the sensibilities of the public, Saraki should resign as a personal favor to himself. He increasingly humiliates himself as he struggles to retain relevance amidst serious charges.

He needs to resign urgently. While clinging to his leadership position, Saraki, the accused, drags the Senate along - like the tortoise dragging its shell - and uses the institution as his shield.

He needs to step aside and defend himself against accusations of wrongdoing.

But being the central character in his own tragedy, Saraki seems fated to persist in processing his ruin until he consummates his self-destruction.


Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu

@emmaugwutheman

emmaugwu.com

tomakint:
I have been reading many brilliant articles on the Saraki's debacle but this one comes out the best......the writer truly chronicled the Genesis to Revelation of how not to jostle for what is not yours in the corridors of power in Saraki. The truth is, Saraki just wanted to be Senate President for his own personal and selfish ambitions and not to render any selfless services to the Nation. He missed the theory of the Banana Peel. Adieu Bukola Saraki ......

tomakint:
I have been reading many brilliant articles on the Saraki's debacle but this one comes out the best......the writer truly chronicled the Genesis to Revelation of how not to jostle for what is not yours in the corridors of power in Saraki. The truth is, Saraki just wanted to be Senate President for his own personal and selfish ambitions and not to render any selfless services to the Nation. He missed the theory of the Banana Peel. Adieu Bukola Saraki ......

aguiyi:
In other words he is been haunded for been smarter than his party members and not because the laws of the land need to be upheld.

No Tears For Senator Saraki By Joe Igbokwe

BY JOE IGBOKWE SEP 22, 2015

One of the biggest problems facing Nigeria today is impunity. It has led to corruption, arrogance, brigandage, deep political crisis and outright murder. This pandemic disease has led to near collapse of our economy, collapse of values, collapse of institutions and collapse of governance. This high table mentality in Nigeria has led gullible people to take laws into their hands and damn the consequences to the detriment of 160 million Nigerians.

This is the reason why Senator Saraki ignored his Party (APC) directives and connived with a useless party (PDP) we just defeated to steal the Senate Presidency. He did not stop there, the criminal arrangement led to the emergence of Senator Ekweremmadu of PDP as the Deputy Senate President. The moment this brigandage took place we saw wild jubilation in the camp of PDP. Ekweremmadu went to Enugu State and told his people that PDP is back. A lady who is a PDP member mockingly said to me: “yes APC won the election but we have taken over the National Assembly” it was then that it became clear to me the extent of damage Senator Saraki inflicted on the leadership of APC.


What Senator Saraki did is unheard of in the history of Party politics. Saraki made the world to believe that APC leaders are unprepared for the task of governing this country. Saraki’s inordinate ambition at once put a question mark on the capacity of leaders of APC to drive leadership in Nigeria. Saraki tried to prove to the whole world that he is smarter than all the leaders of APC put together. Saraki ignored 51APC Senators who were in a meeting and went to do business with 49 PDP Senators, a party APC just defeated after sixteen years bloody struggle. Senator Saraki bribed his way to the clerk of the Senate and cajoled him to proclaim a Senate that is incomplete. Saraki and Ekweremmadu criminally changed the Senate rules in order to carry out the open robbery we saw in the hallowed Chamber of the Senate of Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Because of the inordinate ambition of one man and lust to be the Senate President by all means Saraki ignored the President, the Vice President, APC governors, Senators, House of Reps members etc to sacrifice the unity of his party. Senator Saraki compounded the problems of APC, and mounted a major road block for its smooth take off considering that it is just coming to power after sixteen years in opposition. This man put spanners in the works and initiated a serious internal crisis within the ruling party that nearly made Nigerians who massively voted for APC to begin to lose hope. Saraki and his gang of forty thieves devastated the master plan of our great party to choose the right people to serve as the Principal Officers in the National Assembly. Since July 9 2015 when this shenanigan took place in the Senate and the huge dust it raised, Senator Saraki has remained adamant to disobey the Party’s directives and step aside rather he has continued to run from pillar to post to sustain a stolen seat. The lust for power, rapacious greed, avaricious tendency, and slave to public office have pushed Bukola Saraki to continue to work with PDP in order to weaken APC.

But will Bukola Saraki succeed? Impossible. APC does not want Bukola Saraki as the Senate President and neither does APC want Ekweremmadu as the Deputy Senate President. Saraki has caused enough implosions within the party. He has brought public opprobrium to the party, he has slowed down the Party’s machinery from taking off smoothly, he has portrayed us as a weak party. Now is the time for him to go. Saraki has no choice than to go otherwise he will have himself to blame. Again if Bukola Saraki feels his hands are tightly glued to the exalted seat of the Senate Presidency and therefore cannot be removed, APC may be compelled to tear or cut his hands off, so that the National Assembly can move forward. No man is an island, and none can claim that he is the final word in APC .
I shed no tears for Senator Saraki.


Joe Igbokwe
Lagos

Gbawe:
Bruv, this is not "been smarter than his Party members". It is outright treachery. I think Nigerians are so used to impunity and criminality that we now interpret acts of treachery and deceit, that would be unanimously condemned elsewhere, as "smartness". Saraki was simply more cunning and more treacherous than his Party leaders prepared for. They did not expect such a wholesale act of treachery, indiscipline and total disregard for Party harmony Saraki displayed.

Saraki, by the virtue of being
Saraki, a living museum of baggage,
should have never have attempted
to vie for Senate President. He
should have known that the burden
of scrutiny would crumble him.

chukwudi44:
Too bad the APC leaders were politically naive!! Saraki is already the senate president,just learn to accept some things you cannot change.

TonyeBarcanista:
Saraki must go down! APC must go down too!

PDP to produce the next Senate President

chukwudi44:
Too bad the APC leaders were politically naive!! Saraki is already the senate president,just learn to accept some things you cannot change.

Aminat508:

TonyeBarcanista:
Ma'am, how can I help you?

TonyeBarcanista:
Saraki must go down! APC must go down too!

PDP to produce the next Senate President

Gbawe:
My brother, Saraki's position is untenable. Like I keep telling you, his act of treachery came early in the life of a new government and regime. This means there is plenty of time to nail him. As weak as GEJ was, he would probably have dealt with Amaechi if the former governor started fighting Jonathan one month after GEJ was sworn in as President in May 2011. Saraki's biggest mistake is to think it is still 'business as usual'.

Volksfuhrer:
Saraki's desperation got him into this mess!

Gbawe:
Your stance over the Saraki issue is really refreshing. I think Saraki would have been tolerated as SP, even as he was very corrupt, under Buhari's policy of "leave the bad ways behind and I will work with you". The nail in his coffin is the treachery and total disrespect for his Party. This quickly showed Buhari and others a sign of things to come. It revealed that Saraki is not interested in reforming. In short,

Gbawe:
My brother, Saraki's position is untenable. Like I keep telling you, his act of treachery came early in the life of a new government and regime. This means there is plenty of time to nail him. As weak as GEJ was, he would probably have dealt with Amaechi if the former governor started fighting Jonathan one month after GEJ was sworn in as President in May 2011. Saraki's biggest mistake is to think it is still 'business as usual'.

Gbawe:
Indeed. Joe Igbokwe said it all. Saraki's conduct has never been seen in the history of Nigerian Party politics. When, in the 16 years PDP held power, did our former ruling Party have an opposition politician as deputy Senate President? Saraki does not understand the gravity of what he did, because of blind and selfish ambition, that has now left many seething with rage at his antics. My opinion is that Saraki is gone.

Gbawe:
Indeed. Joe Igbokwe said it all. Saraki's conduct has never been seen in the history of Nigerian Party politics. When, in the 16 years PDP held power, did our former ruling Party have an opposition politician as deputy Senate President? Saraki does not understand the gravity of what he did, because of blind and selfish ambition, that has now left many seething with rage at his antics. My opinion is that Saraki is gone.

RockMaxi:
Saraki is learning the hardway of not to be blinded by self will and greed. Gone or not he will have to live with that stigma.
He has

chukwudi44:
Stigma ko stigmata ni!! Wetin concern Nigerian politician with stigma? Tambuwal did a similar thing and today he is a Governor.Senators would continue to strive to be in his good books so as to secure juicy committee positions

The only thing I don't like in the turn of events is TonyeBarcanista not supporting you in this your blind support for Saraki.
The more reason I have been observing how things will turn out.

omenka:
Some lines I read just make me feel like I'm eating chicken wings from KFC.

Gbawe thanks for bringing this to the table.

Still reading...

Gbawe:
Indeed. Joe Igbokwe said it all. Saraki's conduct has never been seen in the history of Nigerian Party politics. When, in the 16 years PDP held power, did our former ruling Party have an opposition politician as deputy Senate President? Saraki does not understand the gravity of what he did, because of blind and selfish ambition, that has now left many seething with rage at his antics. My opinion is that Saraki is gone.