NASS SIEGE: Questions for Saraki, PDP and professionals who back them
By Bashir Adefaka
Senate President Bukola Saraki, who had boasted he would not reconvene as requested by the Presidency, called an emergency meeting of the leadership of National Assembly for noon of Tuesday. SSS came to block the place as early as 5am. PDP caucus of the House, who are not invited to the mid-day emergency meeting, showed up as early as 6am claiming that Akpabio, who was at that time in Akwa Ibom and Senator Remi Tinubu, who was being ordained as assistant pastor at RCCG same day, wanted to impeach Saraki. But at the end, APC members were clearly not in Abuja, but the PDP members were there to resume as early as 6am even when they are on recess. What was the motif?
Tuesday siege on the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was yet another drama that has characterised the Nigerian democracy in the last three years just simply because, some politicians, who ruled for 16 unfruitful years of lack of concerns for the welfare and security of the people and national integrity, lost elections.
We, as the nation’s people, have witnessed situation where some of these politicians staged their own collapses in the court room after days of appearing for trials on stretchers. We have had situation where some of them, more disgustingly now within the ranks of the new party in government, allegedly masterminded their own assassination attempt only for them to run to the Senate where they are the loudest voice and blame some political foes.
That is not all, we also have had situation where that same fellow had allegedly sponsored his own thugs to destabilise a whole federating unit of his own birthplace just to prove a point that the governor of his state is a devil because, that one too has refused to allow him, a mere lawmaker, dictate the tune of governance for him at that state level. To this end, lives of innocent Nigerians of that state were killed in their prime, innocent people were kidnapped, many travellers along the major road linking that state with other regions of Nigeria were robbed. All in one day!
And this fellow ran to the legislative chamber where he reigns big and used big words of “herdsmen killers killing people in my state”. The Nigeria Police Force moved into action and arrested suspects whose confessions turned out to expose that same fellow who ran to make crocodile tears at the Senate whereas he, himself, was the very provider of the weapons and money that lubricated the sad operations to destabilise his own state.
He was invited by the Police to come and explain his own side he began to rant around calling on the United Nations (UN), the United States of America and other members of the International Communities to come to his rescue from the “persecution” by the Nigerian Police and the Muhammadu Buhari-led Government of the All Progressives Congress (APC); although he was supposed to be a member of the same party. He tried many times to evade the Police investigation until he was picked up after a siege was laid on his Abuja home.
Being taken to his state to face the arrested suspects and clear himself he jumped out of Police vehicle and threatened the Police that he would kill himself and put the Police in trouble. Where I have problem with the Police over that was this; if you say some of these unfortunate elements are governors with immunity, what immunity does this senator carry that you would be so slow in dealing with him? The matter dragged until the senator grew more wings. He has the longest of all the dramatists’ stories.
Some of his sympathisers including some lawyers are trying to tell us that the criminals have denied knowing him and they want us to believe that case is closed at that point. Well, the case is still on. He feigned “serious sickness” as a result of his self-afflicted jumpological misdeed from the Police vehicle when he claimed he was teargased while other Police were not affected by that gas. He became the first teargased politician that immediately got broken in the neck and the rest of that. His same-same SAN lawyer had run to another court to secure his bail on health ground even when hospital report cleared him of any health issue.
Soon as he was released he walked well towards the Senate Chamber. The moment he entered, he suddenly became a no-longer-walking well person to the extent that his same-same colleagues helped him to his seat. Then the drama continued. That was after Bukola Saraki had severally suspended legislative businesses for his sake to solidarise with him at the hospital; a colleague with many worms of alleged criminality running all over his body?!
He however resumed his rascality and political misbehaviour until the court found it was time for him to come to face his trial. The morning he should go to court in Lokoja, he again feigned another drama this time of kidnap. And another supposedly respectable senator in Ben Muray-Bruce became his chief news breaker this time who announced via his twitter handle that the senator I have been talking about all along, Dino Melaye, has been kidnapped. They are the only ones that know about the evils that befall them.
I told whoever cared to listen to watch it, that Police would not be the one that would rescue him but that Melaye the movie scripter will “rescue” himself. Some 12, 13 hours after, after the court session had elapsed, he resurfaced telling us how he became an Agungi Senator: Agungi in Yoruba Language means the “Tree Climber”.
If Melaye and his lawyer and media sympathisers want us to believe that the killers he called “herdsmen” in Kogi denied knowing him as a person, why did he have to stage a kidnap of himself claiming he then stayed on top of the tree for 11 hours before he now came down? This was the fellow who only three days before had one of his armed guards shoot one of the police officers on duty in Kogi State and still went via his twitter handle to make his usual FAKE claim of assassination attempt by the Police on his life.
That was that. We then later had another scene that is not the first, fourth or 13th where Bukola Saraki announced a list of defectors in the Senate putting the party of destination, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) at now 63 as against the All Progressives Congress (APC) at 44. His plan was to feign a PDP majority and then immediately do an abracadabra that would end the reign of President Muhammadu Buhari the next day that was a Thursday. But the APC politicians were smarter than he was. They were able to expose his antics and returned PDP to where it truly belongs saying “we are comfortably in the majority”.
Saraki then had issues making his political direction known. He wanted to use the home base politics to drive home his ambition with intent to carry the Kwara State APC executive committee into the PDP as a whole structure. But Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the never-pressurised lawyer, journalist, elder and Minister of Information and Culture, gave him an “uppercut”, double-crossed him with a back-breaking that saw his plan cracked before hatching. The APC National Working Committee dissolved the Kwara’s Balogun Fulani-led executive committee that Saraki had got John Odigie-Oyegun inaugurate thereby neutralising the impactful earthquake the Senate President had planned to cause to APC from that Mesujamba side of the Nigerian politics. The Moshood Bolarinwa-led executive committee that Oyegun failed to recognise then emerged to run the Party’s affairs in the state pending when a fresh congress would hold.
The Lai Mohammed solution marked the beginning of the Bukola Saraki’s inner heat joined with heat coming from his colleagues particularly Abdullahi Adamu and Abu Ibrahim who asked him to declare his new political party and resign as Senate President or they force him to do so and sack him by themselves. That Wednesday when he announced the fake defectors list, Abu Ibrahim had exposed him at a meeting with Buhari that he and Yakubu Dogara had plotted to impeach the President the following day while they claimed openly that they were in recess. Saraki, frustratedly, rushed out of APC and that made him a minority member of the Senate but yet he has held on to the position of Senate President and refused till to relinquish.
Against his wishes, many of those whose defections he orchestrated from the APC are now regretting they ever did just as the hypocrisy of the gang up of the Olusegun Obasanjo mentored PDP’s coalition against Muhammadu Buhari’s 2019 re-election has now begun to unfold. Atiku Abubakar now blows hot, as a yet to be confirmed information says he says nobody can stop him from returning to APC. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has just made it official that he did not decamp from APC but that he only had issues with Governor Umar Abdullahi Ganduje. That was after he had held meetings with PDP following his officially celebrated defection at the Senate including the meeting with Femi Fani-Kayode, who had always insulted his forefather Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio and the Hausa/Fulani race. Nigerians are giving PDP red cards all the places including in Ekiti where despite many lies and blocking of President’s path to Kayode Fayemi’s APC mega rally in Ado-Ekiti the umbrella party lost to the APC.
Now, Saraki has been exposed as actually shutting down the National Assembly for self reason including to plot against Buhari and frustrate what he and followers in NASS believe to be attempt to remove him as Senate President. But in doing that, Allah who does not support hypocrites did not let him remember that there were some pending national matters demanding urgent attention such as INEC 2019 election budget. He has been told the implications of not reconvening to do that Bill but more as he gets to know about the implications of not passing the INEC election fund Bill, the increase his ego to frustrate it becomes.
Which led to the siege of Tuesday August 6, 2018 that has now caused the Director-General, State Security Services (SSS), Mallam Lawal Daura, his job. The hypocrisy of the siege is wide open and has been analysed by Nigerians. They thought they were smart. They claimed they were in recess but they tried to sneak into the National Assembly Complex as early as 6am. On getting there, they met a detachment of SSS operatives who had been on guards there since 5am. More illogically planned, only PDP lawmakers were affected who claimed they were blocked from gaining entry to the NASS. A woman was boldly facing the SSS men daring them to shoot saying, “Is this how Jonathan used the DSS against Buhari?”
Come to think of it, where did Buhari come into the siege as mentioned by that woman? Are you there to still avenge for Jonathan’s defeat or what?
On the Tuesday NASS siege, more questions include:
Senate President Bukola Saraki, who had boasted he would not reconvene as requested by the Presidency, called an emergency meeting of the leadership of National Assembly for noon of Tuesday. SSS came to block the place as early as 5am. PDP caucus of the House, who are not invited to the mid-day emergency meeting, showed up as early as 6am claiming that Akpabio, who was at that time in Akwa Ibom and Senator Remi Tinubu, who was being ordained as assistant pastor at RCCG same day, wanted to impeach Saraki. But at the end, APC members were clearly not in Abuja, but the PDP members were there to resume as early as 6am even when they are on recess. What was the motif?
Another question is this, when NASS was invaded by the operatives of the SSS that Tuesday morning, the whole media both conventional and social condemned President Muhammadu Buhari for the act. But when the Federal Government acted by sacking the DG of SSS, people now remembered VP Osinbajo is Acting President. Only PDP use that kind of divisive tactics to politick. So why? Are they saying that the NASS was pre-determined thing that Buhari was incapable of checking only Osinbajo to now be the one with the muscle to deal the big blow? PDP did this before and they still have done it again? In whose interest? Of Nigerian people or Saraki or in the cheer interest of wanting to return to power in 2019?
Last but not the least, as at that early period, only PDP lawmakers were at NASS, Channels Television was there and the crew on ground was feeding its studio manned by Maope, who reportedly said only the APC lawmakers were allowed into the legislative chambers and Senator Ben Bruce who has always been in the picture of all of the fake news and dangerous fallacies including an anti-IGP video and fathomed Dino Melaye kidnap was there also talking to the press corroborating the same misinformation. Why are PDP politicians politicking with dangerous lies and still none of the lawyers, media particularly the Channels Television was even on ground there and those so called NGOs on ground are not cautioned by their conscience they are on the path of self-destruction? What is the interest of Channels Television in that matter. I also saw Barrister Monday Ubani on Facebook going up and down trying hard to rejoice over the possible dent the siege would have on the Buhari government without him considering the reasonability of the scenario and I laughed.
Again, while the siege was on at the gate of the National Assembly, Reno Omokri took the centre on the twitter social media telling how National Chairman of APC Adams Oshiomhole was shouting on APC lawmakers, most of who were not in Abuja, to go and sign impeachment of Saraki. He said they were at a particularly place and was directing the media to go there. And our media, now no longer knowing when mischief is mischief, followed suit and the PDP lawmakers who eventually and supposedly too forced their way into the chambers started celebrating taking pictures. Meaning that they had achieved one of their plans. Is that not so? Saraki was seen with Ike Ekweremadu and others celebrating the siege very happily against what should be the disposition of a people who were crying “democracy under threat in Nigeria” earlier outside before. But the moment Lawal Daura, the DG SSS was sacked, they all went sad.
This glaring disposition of the PDP and their lawmakers to the nation’s democracy on Tuesday must be worked upon by the government. The Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, must ensure that those who were involved in the heinous be dealt apprehended no matter what political party, tribe or religion they belong to. It is high time we must tell unpatriotic politicians how not rubbish the image of our country that is still under restoration in the eyes of the globe by President Muhammadu Buhari’s unimpeachable integrity. The time is now. We should be able to determine whether it was right for Bukola Saraki to shutdown the National Assembly for no other than protecting his own position as Senate President even when it is clear to him that he is only buying time on that seat that is not one inherited from his father.
