Rahaman Onike: Saraki And His Running Battle

The latest disclosure by the embattled senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki that his current travail was a price he has to pay for opposing muslim-muslim ticket when APC as the ruling party was to decide its presidential/vice-presidential candidates sounds  like a belated excuse. Assuming he has raised the allegation ab initio probably it might have received greater public sympathy. The media boost given to the assertion notwithstanding, many Nigerian still find it difficult to believe his untoward accusations.It appears Saraki is employing every form of subterfuge to evade justice.From all indications, there is  a clear disjunction between the cause of his problem and the reality of ludicrous defence he is putting forward .As a renegade,he shouldn’t expect less from the party hierarchies anytime he reflects on the circumstances behind his emergence as Senate President.Hence,his counter accusations seem tendetious or could be regarded as an afterthought.

He ought to have raised the accusation before the legal battle against him got to the current stage.

As much one intends to give Senator Saraki the benefit of doubts, the multiplicity nature of the charges against him seems to be a constraint.

There was never a time in the annals of Nigeria when misdemeanours of a senate president would subject the whole senate to ridicule as the situation currently portrays.

It has got to such a messy stage that people are now calling for abolisation of senate.Those people that are advocating the option of unicameral legislative system for the country hung their proposition on ineffectiveness and wastefulness of the senators. In short, some of the antagonists of the current bicameral legislative system are of the opinion that the idea of reducing cost of governance as a matter of imperative demands such an urgent action.

Whatever the intention of the embattled senate president for the accusation, he is still going to be the loser at the end of the whole crises.

In the current circumstance, Senator Saraki seems not to have realised that he is no longer enjoying the public support and confidence by holding tenaciously to the Senate presidency despite bunch of allegations against him. If care is not taken, the 8th National Assembly as currently constituted and presided over by Bukola Saraki will be adjudged as the worst in the annals of this country.

Since the inauguration of the 8th National Assembly, the Senate has not been able to settle down properly to discharge it’s legislative roles owing to discontent which the emergence of Bukola Saraki as senate president last year has caused among members of the Senate.

Essentially, what Saraki requires for now is to be courageous and ready to bear the consequences of his past unethical deals. If he had known that he would need to seek for equity, one day, he ought not to have soiled his hands with dirty deals. Clearly, the embattled Senate president needs more than raising a counter accusation to be exonerated of corrupt charges which is currently threatening his position as senate president.

The unfolding drama during the proceedings of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) is not only a proof that the Senate president is desperate to obstruct the cause of justice but it also exposes his idiosyncratic tendencies as far beyond what his counter accusations could leverage. He should have seen the handwriting on the wall that with Panama leaks and the damning revelations at the CCT, it will take only divine intervention  for him to escape conviction.

With the unfolding scenario at the sittings of the CCT, Saraki does not need a soothsayer to know that the voices calling for his resignation outweighed the population of his  sympathisers.

Given the number of legal  hurdles he needs to contend with under his  current travail, there is a reasonable ground  for anyone to conclude that Saraki’s  chance of survival is lean. It is against this background that I support the call for resignation of Senator Bukola Saraki as senate president to restore public confidence in the integrity of the Senate.If the Senate President remained adamant,the public expectation is that the distinguished senators would not shirk in its fiduciary responsibility to commence his impeachment process.

In a saner societies, the public outcry should not have reached the present magnitude before he would resign.With Saraki tenacity, we are being portrayed as a country peopled and governed by greedy, selfish and desperate characters.

By

RAHAMAN ONIKE

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