2011 Presidential Election: Why Saraki chickened out

Gov. Bukola Saraki

Facts have emerged as to why chairman of the Governors’ Forum and Kwara State governor, Dr. Bukola Saraki made a tactical withdrawal from challenging President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in the 2011 presidential race, a project he and his father, Second Republic Senate Leader Olusola Saraki, were believed to have spent months fine-tuning.

Saraki was supposedly prevailed upon by some of his colleague-governors to soft-pedal on his “inordinate ambition,” who reportedly warned him of the folly of seeking to vie against an incumbent in a typical Third World democracy, and the possible backlashes.

The governors allegedly reminded Saraki of what became of some past and serving colleagues of theirs, including Obong Victor Attah, Chris Ngige, Ayo Fayose, Joshua Dariye, among others, and lately, Jonah Jang of Plateau State, who attempted to eyeball the President.

“The EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) monster is enough to run you and your dad out of Nigeria,” one of the governors reportedly cautioned Governor Saraki, who is believed to have a few questions to answer on the Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria (SGBN) that became insolvent under in his care.

Last week, the older Saraki, who had made several failed dashes at the Presidency, passed what observers believe is the most abrasive criticism of the Yar’Adua administration by any Nigerian politician of note. He had stopped short of asking Yar’Adua, whom he described as “sleeping and slumbering” resign, having, in the septuagenarian’s estimation, failed the North.

“It is not enough that power has shifted back to the North after eight years in the South; now that the North has power, it must justify having power by making a difference in the lives of Nigerians,” howled Saraki, when he visited Sule Lamido and Ibrahim Shekarau, governors of Jigawa and Kano states respectively, last week.

“We must help him (Yar’Adua) succeed. If he is sleeping, we wake him up. If he is slumbering, we tap him,” suggested Saraki, in apparent reference to Yar’Adua’s perceived dawdling along with governance.

Not done, Saraki had continued: “After eight years, we ensured that power shifted back to the North in spite of the reluctance from the South. The South had argued that we held power for 35 years and that there was nothing to show for it. But we fought for our agreement to be upheld and power returned to the North in 2007. It is not enough to simply hold power. We must justify it by making a difference. At the end of our turn, we must be able to show our brothers and sisters in the South that we can rule well.”

Since the peeving remark by the elder Saraki, Pointblanknews.com gathered, Aso Rock Villa, the seat of the Nigerian government, has been inundated by visits, telephone calls and suggestions from friends and close associates of the President on how best to deal with the “Saraki menace.”

It was these hawks, Pointblanknews.com gathered, that reportedly contacted some of Governor Saraki’s close colleagues, such as Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers, to prevail on the governor to “once and for all come out clean and stick a pin in the balloon of dismissive claims his father made on the Yar’Adua Presidency.”

Speaking in a hushed up session with THISDAY, last weekend, Governor Saraki made a much choreographed attempt to extricate himself from the web he and his father had been caught.

Of the same Yar’Adua his dad had less than a week earlier described as “sleeping and slumbering” Saraki sang: “He is honest we believe in him, he is focused and reliable,” and dismissed his purported presidential ambition as a “wicked rumour” since, according to the governor, he was “preoccupied with the Kwara challenge.”

Saraki, whose father, the leader of the Northern Union, had earlier dismissed Yar’Adua as having failed, glib bed: “I can assure you that the political leadership in the north is solidly behind Yar’Adua. We believe he is focused, he is sincere, he is honest, and he is committed in moving Nigeria forward.”

Even before Saraki went to publicly denounce his father, the Presidency apparatchik had reportedly chided Governor Lamido for giving Senator Olusola Saraki the platform to pour invectives on the Commander-in-Chief.

“We were shocked that with all the experience Lamido claims he has, including the one he was expected to have gleaned from the foreign service, he would be naive enough to allow a disgruntled and spent politician like Saraki use his office to rain invectives on the person and the office of Mr. President without as much as raising a finger in protest. We had to force him to use a paper like THISDAY to control the ruin he brought, not upon Mr. President, but upon himself,” said a Presidency source.

Thus, Lamido headed to THISDAY, one of Nigeria’s leading political newspapers, to “set the records straight that the North was solidly behind Yar’Adua, whom he insisted deserved a second term.”

Declared Lamido: “I am more saddened and more disturbed that they (criticisms) are coming from his (Yar’Adua’s) people in Katsina State. I am equally worried about the vicious propaganda of some persons in the North who offered themselves as presidential materials but was rejected by Nigerians.

“The same people have found their way again to begin to take on Yar’Adua at personal level. It is simply indecent. It is immoral; it is evil. How do you expect our own brothers, our own fellow Muslims, to find pastime in perpetually picking on Yar’Adua simply because they lack the moral standing he commands in the North,” quipped Lamido.