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.”
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