Bukola Saraki: How to fall from the top

Senate President Bukola Saraki

Abubakar Bukola Saraki (or ABS as he is fondly called by his admirers) had worked tirelessly to get to the top. He had no reason not to; his father, Dr Abubakar Olusola Saraki, the legendary generous, medical doctor, businessman and politician had earlier achieved the enviable feat of becoming the Senate Leader in the Second Republic. However, Olusola Saraki’s, couple of attempts to become Nigeria’s President were serially frustrated by Ibrahim Babangida’s hopeless transition programme. It is normal therefore to expect Saraki Junior to seek to exceed the achievements of his father. That was how Saraki, two-term Governor of Kwara State, 2003 to 2011, got the motivation to dump the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and join the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The first approach to falling from the top is to develop an unhealthy ambition for the top. During the 2015 elections, Bukola Saraki invested resources into both the Muhammadu Buhari presidential campaign and the APC national campaign. After the party won both the Presidency and the Senate, Bukola Saraki saw no more obstacles to the realisation of his ambition to become Senate President. Ahead of his election as Senate President on 9th June, 2015, Bukola Saraki was not the choice of APC. The party’s anointed candidate was Senator Ahmed Lawan from Borno State. So, while most of the APC Senators were at the International Conference Centre awaiting a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, a handful of their colleagues teamed up with those of the defeated and wounded party, the PDP, to install Saraki as Senate President!

The second way to crash from the top is to rub your party’s nose into the mud by arranging the election of an opposition Senator (Ike Ekweremadu), as Deputy Senate President! Ekweremadu’s emergence as number two in the Red Chamber embittered, embarrassed, and betrayed APC and set the stage for a future showdown.

The third path to a humiliating way down is to turn down the list of your party’s handpicked principal officers of the Senate and also frustrate the party’s efforts to nullify the election of your deputy (Senator Ekweremadu) which was in the first place achieved through forged formula.
You are still at the top, but all of a sudden someone dusts up an assets declaration form you submitted more than a decade ago with serious evidence of fraud. How about that? The EFCC now, in consonance with the accountability and change mantra of the “new Sherriff in town”, finds that you are liable and promptly drags you to the Code of Conduct tribunal to explain yourself.
This brings me to the next step to take to fall off from the top. So, instead of squarely facing up to the charges at the tribunal, you begin to mislead people to believe you are witch hunted, you refuse to enter the dock at the tribunal, you assemble 80 or 90 lawyers intended to intimidate the judge and you bring “forensic experts” from Israel, etc.  Instead of going to account for the discrepancies in your assets declaration form, you move from one court to the other to stall the trial but then you fail. 

However, you know you are done by the time an EFCC Principal Detective, Mr Michael Wetcast, testifies at the tribunal that the commission’s investigations have revealed that you maintained three accounts with Guarantee Trust Bank, one in Naira which between 2005 and 2013 had, allegedly, an inflow and outflow of N4 billion; another account, in United States Dollars which between 2009 and 2013 had a turnover of $6 million. You change part of the dollars into one and a half million British Pounds and wire same for the purchase of property in London. Your domestic aide, whose name is simply given as Ubi, makes five separate cash lodgements amounting to N77 million into your GTB account!
Another aide, Abdul Adama, also allegedly, on a single day, makes cash lodgements 50 times into the same account of sums varying from N600,000 to N900,000. Is this the very smouldering gun that you have been trying to hide from Nigerians all this while?

Now you know the game is up but how do you come down from the top? Do you want to walk down or jump down? Now you know, all of the Senators put together, were they to join one single party, cannot help you, they can’t stop this trial.
You hand the gavel to Senator Ike Ekweremadu to see what he can do to help? Canvass in the Senate all the arguments made before the courts which were thrown out? Still set to speedily amend both the CCT Act and the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA 2015) so as to rescue you and render the case a nullity?
Well, just as in the Senate, there is a rat-race at the tribunal. Chairman Danladi Umar of the CCT will try your case day to day until conclusion. How fast can you and other Senators rewrite the CCT Act and torpedo this trial? 

I leave you with my opening statement in an article I wrote (published on 23rd June 2015), under the caption Saraki’s phyrric victory: “Unlike the selection of APC’s presidential flag bearer and his lieutenant, the election into Nigeria’s third most important political office (Senate Presidency) has been messy and there’s no doubt that some politicians are going to pay for it by and by and one of them is Saraki.”
And here is my final word in that same article: “Bukola’s victory will be short lived and he’ll need the party shortly.”