Meanwhile, the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has backed down as it has finally accepted the leadership of the National Assembly. This new development was made known by the chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. But a notion that has gained currency in the last couple of days suggests the answer to the question reside in the latter option.
The visit to the former vice president was the first major courtesy call undertaken by Saraki after he was elected president of the Senate, a development that had drawn the ire of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
However, the insinuation of complicity in the events that culminated in Saraki’s triumph is one the Atiku camp is uncomfortable with. “It is baseless and unfounded to suggest that Atiku conspired with the PDP or Saraki to ‘sabotage’ the APC”, said Mr. Paul Ibe, head of Atiku Media Office and spokesman for the former vice-president.
“He could have congratulated Senator Ahmed Lawan (or any other leader) if he had won. It is simplistic to attribute conspiratorial agenda to an innocuous congratulatory visit. “Atiku’s loyalty to his party is indisputable. He remains a loyal party member. He, in fact, threw his political assets behind the Buhari presidential campaign.
Any suggestion that he conspired with Saraki or anybody is the figment of someone’s imagination,” he said. Some reports had claimed that Saraki’s emergence as the Senate president was, more or less, orchestrated by the former vice president who drew on his clout among PDP senators and a handful of APC senators who had been part of the “New PDP” that would later quit the PDP and, ultimately, set the tone for the crisis that led to its huge loss at the last general elections.
Ibe pointed out that Atiku did not orchestrate the emergence of the new leadership in the National Assembly, adding that it’s “nothing but political mischief as he had refused to leave the party or work for the PDP even when then President Jonathan was desperate for his (Atiku’s) support. According to him, visits by politicians and the APC leaders including that of the Senate President are common political rituals in the former vice president’s Asokoro residence.“For the purposes of emphasis, the President has confidence in him and that explains why he had drafted him as an envoy of sorts in the race leading up to the emergence of a Nigerian President of African Development Bank (AfDB),” he said.
The APC hierarchy had described Saraki’s emergence as the product of treachery and threatened to sanction members who went against the party’s wishes. Saturday Telegraph learnt that the apparent revolt also stemmed by the fact that the group of five Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors have a separate grouse with the powers-that-be in the APC. There was a growing concern among members of the PDP component in the APC that they were sidelined and emasculated in the power-sharing arrangements following the success of the party in the general elections.
“If the elections in the National Assembly had gone the way proposed by the party, the New PDP, ANPP and other stakeholders component of the party would have been left empty handed with its attendant crisis. Moreover, either by default or divine intervention, the South-East geo-political zone has now been accommodated in the leadership in this unusual coalition government in the leadership of he Senate,” a ranking senator said on Thursday. However, Odigie-Oyegun, while fielding questions from State House Correspondents at the Defence House in Abuja yesterday, said there was no cause for alarm over the emergence of Sakari as the President of the Senate since he was duly elected by his colleagues. He said: “Of course, he has been duly elected by his colleagues. We have a reality and we must live with it.”
Odigie Oyegun said what happened within the party was a family issue which could easily be settled. “There is no next step, what has happened is within the APC family and we are sorting it out within the family. People say they are going to court which is their right, but as a party we are looking at everything and we are coming out strong.
“We have faced greater challenges before and this too shall pass away. No. It is not the first or second time we have passed through and we came out strong. This may not even be the last time, we come out every time stronger and more determined,” he said.
Speaking on Saraki’s aborted visit to the APC secretariat on Thursday, he said: “Nothing went wrong, there were a lot of consultations and you can’t be in two places at the same time and so it was not comfortable for us, but we have been talking. We don’t want to make a song and dance of it, everything being put in proper perspective.”
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