Nigeria: Exodus From Buhari’s APC Continues As Saraki, Kwara Governor Defects

The Senate President Bukola Saraki and Kwara state governor Ahmed Fatah today dumped president Buhari’s ruling party, All Progressive Congress.

Saraki’s decision to leave the party has been a subject of debate long before the Federal Government grilled him on false asset declaration.

But the Senate president, who left PDP in 2014 to join forces with Tinubu and others to form APC, ended the long speculations as he announced his defection from APC on his twitter handle.

I wish to inform Nigerians that, after extensive consultations, I have decided to take my leave of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

— Bukola Saraki (@bukolasaraki) July 31, 2018

Meanwhile, the successor of the senate president in Kwara State, Governor Ahmed Fatah, has also announced his defection from APC to PDP.

Fatah had already made it known that the decision of his boss (Saraki) will determine his next move in politics.

The governor alongside his disciples moved to PDP immediately their godfather (Saraki) announced his exit from APC.

In a statement made available to our correspondent by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Communication, Dr. Muyideen Akorede, the governor decided after a broad consultation.

“Following due consultations with the people and in response to calls by major stakeholder groups in the state, Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed today defected to the PDP having realized that the APC can no longer serve as a platform for achieving the aspirations and expectations of his people,” the statement read.

Meanwhile, the national publicity secretary of APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has tendered his resignation following the development.

The issue surrounding his resignation is yet to ascertain as at press time, but a source from Abuja confirmed that he had tendered his resignation.

Challenge Saraki may face

A reliable source close to APC senators has confided in our correspondent that a frantic decision by the remaining APC senator has been taken by lawmakers at the Senate to impeach Saraki.

According to him, the remaining APC senators have held a meeting where they decided that Saraki must step down as the Senate President following his announcement.

He added that since the APC senators still maintain simple majority at the upper chamber, the hurdles still favor them on an agreed decision.

“It is better that we know who and who real senators of our party are. As it APC still maintain the simple majority in the house and that gives us the edge. Meetings have been held on what will be the fate of Saraki immediately he defects from APC. He cannot be in PDP and lead the house since APC has the majority. And once he defects he has to step down, and following this, you know what will happen. The meeting with the president has made all APC senator more united now, and they are ready to face the ‘war'”, he said.

Meanwhile, a chieftain of APC from Lagos state, Joe Igbokwe, has said the mass defection that occurred on the floor of National Assembly would by no means affect the party’s chance of coming back in 2019.

Igbokwe while speaking with our correspondent said: “APC still has a majority, and that means we are still fully in control. Moreover, masses know our achievement, and these will ease our coming back. It will surprise you that some of the defectors will not come back to the house because we will ensure that our candidates beat them in their constituencies”.

He also said APC is not a party of failure and will not fail in bid to come back and improve Nigeria’s democracy in 2019.

Meanwhile, it was also learned that the Senate President might also be forced to quit his position upon his trial by police over the Offa robbery case.

Police operatives recently grilled Saraki at the National Assembly.

PRESS RELEASE BY THE SENATE PRESIDENT BUKOLA SARAKI ON WHY HE LEFT APC

I wish to inform Nigerians that, after extensive consultations, I have decided to take my leave of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

This is not a decision that I have made lightly. If anything at all, I have tarried for so long and did all that was humanly possible, even in the face of great provocation, ridicule, and flagrant persecution, to give the opportunity for peace, reconciliation, and harmonious existence.

Perhaps, more significantly, I am mindful of the fact that I carry on my shoulder a great responsibility for thousands of my supporters, political associates, and friends, who have trusted in my leadership and have attached their political fortunes to mine. However, it is after an extensive consultation with all the important stakeholders that we have come to this difficult but inevitable decision to pitch our political tent elsewhere; where we could enjoy a greater sense of belonging and where the interests of the greatest number of our Nigerians would be best served.

While I take full responsibility for this decision, I will like to emphasize that it is a decision that has been inescapably imposed on me by certain elements and forces within the APC who have ensured that the minimum conditions for peace, cooperation, inclusion and a general sense of belonging did not exist.

They have done everything to ensure that the basic rules of party administration, which should promote harmonious relations among the various elements within the party were blatantly disregarded. All governance principles which were required for a healthy functioning of the party and the government were deliberately violated or undermined. And all entreaties for justice, equity, and fairness as a basic precondition for peace and unity, not only within the party, but also the country at large, were simply ignored, or employed as an additional pretext for further exclusion.

The experience of my people and associates in the past three years is that they have suffered from alienation and have been treated as outsiders in their own party. Thus, many have become disaffected and disenchanted. At the same time, opportunities to seek redress and correct these anomalies were deliberately blocked as a government-within-a-government had formed an impregnable wall and left in the cold, everyone else who was not recognized as “one of us”. This is why my people, like all self-respecting people, would do, decided to seek accommodation elsewhere.

I have had the privilege to lead the Nigerian legislature in the past three years as the President of the Senate and the Chairman of the National Assembly. The framers of our constitution envisage a degree of benign tension among the three arms of government if the principle of checks and balances must continue to serve as the building block of our democracy. In my role as the head of the legislature and a leader of the party, I have ensured that this necessary tension did not escalate at any time in such a way that it could encumber Executive function or correspondingly, undermine the independence of the legislature. Over the years, I have made great efforts in the overall interest of the country, and in spite of my personal predicament, to manage situations that would otherwise have resulted in unsavory consequences for the government and the administration. My colleagues in the Senate will bear testimony to this.

However, what we have seen is a situation whereby every dissent from the legislature was framed as an affront to the executive or as part of an agenda to undermine the government itself. The populist notion of anti-corruption became a ready weapon for silencing any form of dissent and for framing even principled objection as “corruption fighting back”. The persistent onslaught against the legislature and open incitement of the people against their own representatives became a default argument in defense of any short-coming of the government in a manner that betrays all too easily, a certain contempt for the Constitution itself or even the democracy that it is meant to serve.

Unfortunately, the self-serving gulf that has been created between the leadership of the two critical arms of government based on distrust and mutual suspicion has made any form of constructive engagement impossible. Therefore, anything short of a slavish surrender in a way that reduces the legislature to a mere rubber stamp would not have been sufficient in procuring the kind of rapprochement that was desired in the interest of all. But I have no doubt in my mind, that to surrender this way is to be complicit in the subversion of the institution that remains the very bastion of our democracy. I am a Democrat. And I believe that anyone who lays even the most basic claim to being a Democrat will not accept peace on those terms; which seeks to compromise the very basis of our existence as the parliament of the people.

The recent weeks have witnessed a rather unusual attempts to engage with some of these most critical issues at stake. Unfortunately, the discord has been allowed to fester unaddressed for too long, with dire consequences for the ultimate objective of delivering the common good and achieving peace and unity in our country. Any hope of reconciliation at this point was therefore very slim indeed. Most of the horses had bolted from the stable.

The emergence of new national party executives a few weeks ago held out some hopes, however slender. The new party chairman has swung into action and did his best alongside some of the Governors of APC and His Excellency, the Vice President. I thank them for all their great efforts to save the day and achieve reconciliation. Even though I thought these efforts were coming late in the day but seeing the genuine commitment of these gentlemen, I began to think that perhaps it was still possible to reconsider the situation.

However, as I have realized all along, there are some others in the party leadership hierarchy, who did not think the dialogue was the way forward and therefore chose to play the fifth columnists. These individuals went to work and ensured that they scuttled the great efforts and the good intentions of these aforementioned leaders of the party. Perhaps, had these divisive forces not thrown the cogs in the wheel at the last minutes, and in a manner that made it impossible to sustain any trust in the process, the story today would have been different.

For me, I leave all that behind me. Today, I start as I return to the party where I began my political journey, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

When we left the PDP to join the then-nascent coalition of All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014, we left in a quest for justice, equity, and inclusion; the fundamental principles on which the PDP was originally built but which it had deviated from. We were attracted to the APC by its promise of change. We fought hard along with others and defeated the PDP.

In retrospect, it is now evident that the PDP has learned more from its defeat than the APC has learned from its victory. The PDP that we return to is now a party that has learnt its lessons the hard way and have realized that no member of the party should be taken for granted; a party that has realized that inclusion, justice, and equity are basic preconditions for peace; a party that has realized that never again can the people of Nigeria be taken for granted.

I am excited by the new efforts, which seeks to build the reborn PDP on the core principles of promoting democratic values; internal democracy; accountability; inclusion and national competitiveness; genuine commitment to restructuring and devolution of powers; and an abiding belief in zoning of political and elective offices as an inevitable strategy for managing our rich diversity as a people of one great indivisible nation called Nigeria.

What we have all agreed is that a deep commitment to these ideas were not only a demonstration of our patriotism but also a matter of enlightened self-interest, believing that our very survival as political elites of this country will depend on our ability to earn the trust of our people and in making them believe that, more than anything else, we are committed to serving the people.

What the experience of the last three years has taught us is that the most important task that we face as a country is how to reunite our people. Never before had so many people in so many parts of our country felt so alienated from their Nigerianness. Therefore, we understand that the greatest task before us is to reunite the county and give everyone a sense of belonging regardless of region or religion.

Every Nigerian must have an instinctive confidence that he or she will be treated with justice and equity in any part of the country regardless of the language they speak or how they worship God. This is the great task that trumps all. Unless we are able to achieve this, all other claims to progress no matter how defined would remain unsustainable.

This is the task that I am committing myself to and I believe that it is in this PDP, that I will have the opportunity to play my part.  It is my hope that the APC will respect the choice that I have made as my democratic right, and understand that even though we will now occupy a different political space, we do not necessarily become enemies unto one another.