PRESS STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE, HIS EXCELLENCY, DR. ABUBAKAR BUKOLA SARAKI, CON, ON 31ST JULY, 2018.
I
wish to inform Nigerians that, after extensive consultations, I have
decided to take my leave of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
This
is not a decision that I have made lightly. If anything at all, I have
tarried for so long and did all that was humanly possible, even in the
face of great provocation, ridicule and flagrant persecution, to give
opportunity for peace, reconciliation and harmonious existence.
Perhaps,
more significantly, I am mindful of the fact that I carry on my
shoulder a great responsibility for thousands of my supporters,
political associates and friends, who have trusted in my leadership and
have attached their political fortunes to mine. However, it is after an
extensive consultation with all the important stakeholders that we have
come to this difficult but inevitable decision to pitch our political
tent elsewhere; where we could enjoy greater sense of belonging and
where the interests of the greatest number of our Nigerians would be
best served.
While I take full responsibility for this decision,
I will like to emphasise that it is a decision that has been
inescapably imposed on me by certain elements and forces within the APC
who have ensured that the minimum conditions for peace, cooperation,
inclusion and a general sense of belonging did not exist.
They
have done everything to ensure that the basic rules of party
administration, which should promote harmonious relations among the
various elements within the party were blatantly disregarded. All
governance principles which were required for a healthy functioning of
the party and the government were deliberately violated or undermined.
And all entreaties for justice, equity and fairness as basic
precondition for peace and unity, not only within the party, but also
the country at large, were simply ignored, or employed as additional
pretext for further exclusion.
The experience of my people and
associates in the past three years is that they have suffered alienation
and have been treated as outsiders in their own party. Thus, many have
become disaffected and disenchanted. At the same time, opportunities to
seek redress and correct these anomalies were deliberately blocked as a
government-within-a-government had formed an impregnable wall and left
in the cold, everyone else who was not recognized as “one of us”. This
is why my people, like all self-respecting people would do, decided to
seek accommodation elsewhere.
I have had the privilege to lead
the Nigerian legislature in the past three years as the President of the
Senate and the Chairman of the National Assembly. The framers of our
constitution envisage a degree of benign tension among the three arms of
government if the principle of checks and balances must continue to
serve as the building block of our democracy. In my role as the head of
the legislature, and a leader of the party, I have ensured that this
necessary tension did not escalate at any time in such a way that it
could encumber Executive function or correspondingly, undermine the
independence of the legislature. Over the years, I have made great
efforts in the overall interest of the country, and in spite of my
personal predicament, to manage situations that would otherwise have
resulted in unsavoury consequences for the government and the
administration. My colleagues in the Senate will bear testimony to
this.
However, what we have seen is a situation whereby every
dissent from the legislature was framed as an affront on the executive
or as part of an agenda to undermine the government itself. The populist
notion of anti-corruption became a ready weapon for silencing any form
of dissent and for framing even principled objection as “corruption
fighting back”. Persistent onslaught against the legislature and open
incitement of the people against their own representatives became a
default argument in defence of any short-coming of the government in a
manner that betrays all too easily, a certain contempt for the
Constitution itself or even the democracy that it is meant to serve.
Unfortunately,
the self-serving gulf that has been created between the leadership of
the two critical arms of government based on distrust and mutual
suspicion has made any form of constructive engagement impossible.
Therefore, anything short of a slavish surrender in a way that reduces
the legislature to a mere rubber stamp would not have been sufficient in
procuring the kind of rapprochement that was desired in the interest of
all. But I have no doubt in my mind, that to surrender this way is to
be complicit in the subversion of the institution that remains the very
bastion of our democracy. I am a democrat. And I believe that anyone who
lays even the most basic claim to being a democrat will not accept
peace on those terms; which seeks to compromise the very basis of our
existence as the parliament of the people.
The recent weeks have
witnessed a rather unusual attempts to engage with some of these most
critical issues at stake. Unfortunately, the discord has been allowed to
fester unaddressed for too long, with dire consequences for the
ultimate objective of delivering the common good and achieving peace and
unity in our country. Any hope of reconciliation at this point was
therefore very slim indeed. Most of the horses had bolted from the
stable.
The emergence of a new national party executives a few
weeks ago held out some hopes, however slender. The new party chairman
has swung into action and did his best alongside some of the Governors
of APC and His Excellency, the Vice President. I thank them for all
their great efforts to save the day and achieve reconciliation. Even
though I thought these efforts were coming late in the day, but seeing
the genuine commitment of these gentlemen, I began to think that perhaps
it was still possible to reconsider the situation.
However, as I
have realized all along, there are some others in the party leadership
hierarchy, who did not think dialogue was the way forward and therefore
chose to play the fifth columnists. These individuals went to work and
ensured that they scuttled the great efforts and the good intentions of
these aforementioned leaders of the party. Perhaps, had these divisive
forces not thrown the cogs in the wheel at the last minutes, and in a
manner that made it impossible to sustain any trust in the process, the
story today would have been different.
For me, I leave all that
behind me. Today, I start as I return to the party where I began my
political journey, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
When we
left the PDP to join the then nascent coalition of All Progressives
Congress (APC) in 2014, we left in a quest for justice, equity and
inclusion; the fundamental principles on which the PDP was originally
built but which it had deviated from. We were attracted to the APC by
its promise of change. We fought hard along with others and defeated the
PDP.
In retrospect, it is now evident that the PDP has learnt
more from its defeat than the APC has learnt from its victory. The PDP
that we return to is now a party that has learnt its lessons the hard
way and have realized that no member of the party should be taken for
granted; a party that has realized that inclusion, justice and equity
are basic precondition for peace; a party that has realized that never
again can the people of Nigeria be taken for granted.
I am
excited by the new efforts, which seeks to build the reborn PDP on the
core principles of promoting democratic values; internal democracy;
accountability; inclusion and national competitiveness; genuine
commitment to restructuring and devolution of powers; and an abiding
belief in zoning of political and elective offices as an inevitable
strategy for managing our rich diversity as a people of one great
indivisible nation called Nigeria.
What we have all agreed is
that a deep commitment to these ideals were not only a demonstration of
our patriotism but also a matter of enlightened self-interest, believing
that our very survival as political elites of this country will depend
on our ability to earn the trust of our people and in making them
believe that, more than anything else, we are committed to serving the
people.
What the experience of the last three years have taught
us is that the most important task that we face as a country is how to
reunite our people. Never before had so many people in so many parts of
our country felt so alienated from their Nigerianness. Therefore, we
understand that the greatest task before us is to reunite the county and
give everyone a sense of belonging regardless of region or religion.
Every
Nigerian must have an instinctive confidence that he or she will be
treated with justice and equity in any part of the country regardless of
the language they speak or how they worship God. This is the great task
that trumps all. Unless we are able to achieve this, all other claim to
progress no matter how defined, would remain unsustainable.
This
is the task that I am committing myself to and I believe that it is in
this PDP, that I will have the opportunity to play my part. It is my
hope that the APC will respect the choice that I have made as my
democratic right, and understand that even though we will now occupy a
different political space, we do not necessarily become enemies unto one
another.
Thank you.
Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, CON
President of the Senate
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