This certainly is not the best of times for Senate President, Bukola
Saraki. From all seeming indices, he is living in borrowed times and the
debts he has to pay for pushing his ambitions so vauntingly as he did in
this dispensation far outweighs the benefits he might have gained from
that effort. He has been kicked, shoved around, boxed and chased around as
much as he had boxed, bitten, schemed and plotted to promote his
interests. These are normal accoutrements of power and its pursuit, you
might say, and nothing is wrong with that. Oh yes, Bukola Saraki is taking
a normal course. It is his due right to nurse, promote and pursue his
ambition as it us the rights of those that he feels are against him to
stop his ambition, if it impinges on theirs. So why the heck is he making
an issue of this?
To be frank, I don’t have personal distaste for Saraki, not that it
matters though, but I have serious reservations about the means he employs
to pursue his ambitions especially his present position as Senate
President. I am galled that Saraki has to practically reinvent the Italian
Social Scientist, Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, in his bid to
become Senate President and he never minded if his party implodes in the
process. Sure, you have the right to adopt any tactics that suits you to
drive your ambition but where it poses great danger to the platform that
even made you what you are, it becomes a cardinal sin. As long as you
deign your means right, nothing gives you the impetus to question the
means your opponents employ to deal with you. If all is fair in battle,
there should be no prisoners on every side.
So I wholly disagree with Saraki’s monotonous effort to raise outcries
that his present trial before the Code of Conduct Tribunal is the
handiwork of his political enemies. I seriously question his scruples in
politicising what is clearly a criminal breach. But even if we agree with
him, which law says that his political opponents have no right to exploit
his indiscretions to do him in? Which law verifies what is acceptable or
not in prosecuting political battles? Did such law also vet the amoral way
Saraki became the Senate President? On my last check, Saraki has not
ceased being a politician so why is he making deft efforts to run away
from what he terms the politicisation of his corruption charges when all
he needs to do to clear every fog; political, criminal or otherwise, is to
satisfactorily prove his innocence on the charges raised against him? At
least, the charges are clear and cadent or is he oblivious of them? But
Saraki is a politician; a consummate one for that matter given the way he
emerged as Senate President so why is he afraid of political battles?
But then, my original thoughts after the Saraki emergence as Senate
President was that Saraki would have deployed wisdom and tact in playing
himself back to the party he badly hurt by his act of betrayal. Lo and
behold, he displayed the worst case of political naïvety any politician
of his cadre has ever exhibited. Possibly drunk from his victory, Saraki
rubbed the salt further on a festering injury by his conduct immediately
after his emergence and till date. If today, the plank he is leaning on to
evade a most horrific case had collapsed, how can any person mourn with
him when he tossed a golden opportunity to mend the fences he callously
pulled down enroute the satiation of his ambition? Saraki must have been
goaded by the rabid urge the PDP provided for him to over reach himself
but he showed himself a horrible student of power and history . His
cloning of Machiavelli was a default act that rather worsened his woes
than sooth them.
But peace, let me ask Saraki some questions as he sweats to find ways to
dodge an impeding eclipse. What was on your mind when you went impudently
against your party’s decision to pick one of you APC contenders to the
Senate Presidency through an internal election, to be its choice of senate
President? What was on your mind, Bukola Saraki, when you formed an
illicit cohort with a hurting, bitter and mischievous PDP that was
desperate to play the role of spoiler to APC’s rightful choice for
legislate leadership? What was on your mind when you cut your nose to
spite your face by conspiring with PDP to rob APC of its rightful dues?
Bukola Saraki, what exactly was on your mind when you made an evil deal
with PDP to share out tip legislative positions that ordinary belong to
the ruling party in exchange for supporting you to emerge Senate President
in clear denigration of your party APC? What was in your mind as you
teamed up with malevolent PDP to spit on your party and taunt it by
emerging in an exclusive election that involved the full cahoots of PDP
senators and a sprinkling of APC senators who are your loyalists? What was
on your mind when majority of APC senators were schemed out through such
dirty means as you and your gangsters employed, to coner the senate
leadership?
Bukola Saraki, what was on your mind as you proceeded to further rub shit
on the face of your party by ignominiously refusing to accept your party’s
choice for Senate key positions, in preference for your own lackeys? What
was in your mind when you and your lackeys, with obtrusive backup of the
sly PDP, insisted on refusing good counsel and defying the party’s
preferences for positions they have exclusive rights over? What was in
your mind as you danced so alluringly to the drum beat a distressed PDP
was beating for you and mocked your party in an astonishing display of
political foolishness?
I ask you, Bukola Saraki, what was on your mind as you turned Father
Christmas to a distressed PDP, dishing out critical senate committee
leadership to your PDP cohorts, to the sorrow and chagrin of your party
leaders abd senators? What was in your mind as you became the official
leader of the PDP in a house with majority APC senators? What was in your
mind as you robbed APC to pay PDP in a manner that rankles decency? What
was on your mind as made your party the enemy and the opposition party,
the ruling party in the senate? What was on your mind as you became the
patron of the PDP and swerved debates to ridicule your party in your
senate?
Let me ask you Bukola Saraki, what was on your mind as you slyly sent your
man Friday and quaint bogeyman, Dino Melaye to raise the funny allegation
that N25 billion was stolen in the Treasury Single Account when you knew
it was a gregarious bogey? What was on your mind as you teamed up with
PDP senators to launch a wild goose chase aimed at rubbishing the
Presidency in your false charge that those who you see in your dreams as
impediments to your magisterial reign as Senate President, owns Remita and
were collecting tens of billions of Naira for TSA operations when you knew
it was false? By the way, Bukola Saraki, what happened to that your panel
you set up to prove your own lie? You should be decent enough to avail the
nation of its findings and tender unreserved apology to whoever you have
besmirched by that infantile prank.
Pray, what was on your mind, Bukola Saraki, when you launched the
hullabaloo of. ‘Missing budget’, ‘Stolen Budget’, ‘Replaced Budget’ etc
and sought to rub soot on the presidency, with full support of your fellow
PDP senators over the 2016 budget proposal? What was on your mind as you
twirled and sought to announce to the nation that the presidency ‘stole’
the budget it delivered to the senate and that you and your senate will
only deliberate on the original (stolen) budget as delivered by the
presidency? What was on your mind when you were pulling these indecorous
stunts? What was on your mind when you descended from the Olympian height
of senate presidency to the low of a common trickster with a ready mob of
tutored hirelings to please?
Certainly, I don’t believe you, Bukola Saraki, was thinking that APC would
have sat back, sucked all your insults and atrocities and congratulated
you as the smart kid you feel you are and allow you to continue poking
your fingers ceaselessly into its eyes. If you have elephantine scruples
that could be exploited to shove you aside, what makes you to think it is
wrong to employ it it deal with the nuisance you have sworn to constitute
to your party and its government? What you must realise is that a palm oil
vendor is the wrong person to cause commotion in a market. The charges
against you are entirely criminal and your exculpation lies only in
proving convincingly that you were wrongly charged. If your political
opponents exploit these misdemeanours of yours to shove you off a stool
you stole, you have no reason to complain because they operate on a higher
moral pedestal than you that connived with enemies to steal and covet what
rightly belongs to others.
I asked these questions because you have sought to evade the real
components of your corruption trial to make it look like a political witch
hunt. I even shudder at which person has acquired so much power to
politically dust a whole Senate President so badly that he has turned you
to a cry baby. You see, you are more politically experienced than the
House of Representative Speaker, Yakubu Dogara who was guilty of the same
offence as you but who has managed his own liabilities so well when you
are increasing your own.
By now, it should be obvious that you, Bukola Saraki, have exhausted your
options to evade your shadows. Whatever was on your mind as you kept
turning the table over yourself in your queer management of power has not
served you well. You have jammed the door so violently to your own face.
You have aimed at your big toe and dropped the spear. You have burnt your
bridge. You have wasted a golden opportunity to show you have gained real
experience in politics and power management. You see, it takes next to
nothing to enter into an illicit alliance with a rolling stone, which the
PDP became after the March 28, 2015 election, employ such mischievous
alliance to snatch the leadership of the senate as you did, proceed there
to share out positions amongst your conniving cahoots but it takes quite a
lot to manage such power and stay afloat. By now, Bukola Saraki, you just
have realised the futility of an overwhelming vote of confidence your
colleagues brazenly cook for you. They take nothing to concoct. By your
next date at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, you would have realised that
you are patiently waiting at the doors of jail and not even a global vote
of confidence by all legislators in the world will save you from this
self-inflicted certainty for you are a failed student of power.
Peter Claver Oparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com