Saraki and Dogara: Not guilty as charged

There have been consistent efforts by reactionary forces within the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, to portray Senator Bukola Saraki and Hon. Yakubu Dogara as disobedient and treacherous party men since June 9, 2015 when the election of presiding officers of the National Assembly. But nothing can be father from the truth. While, I disagree […]

There have been consistent efforts by reactionary forces within the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, to portray Senator Bukola Saraki and Hon. Yakubu Dogara as disobedient and treacherous party men since June 9, 2015 when the election of presiding officers of the National Assembly. But nothing can be father from the truth. While, I disagree with those who want us to believe that the party has no say in who becomes what at the National Assembly, I prefer the term “party influence” to “party supremacy”. Only the Constitution is supreme in a democracy.  APC’s dictates cannot be superior to Section 50 of Nigerian Constitution, which upholds the rights of even non-APC federal lawmakers to aspire to any presiding office of their choice.    
Besides, ascribing supremacy to the party, especially when it is in pursuit of the personal interests of a few, sounds haughty, arrogant, and tyrannical. On the other hand, party influence means that you are able to rally your party men and women to tow party direction without necessarily feeling compelled, subjugated, and cheated. Rather they obey the party because the party’s motives and modus operandi radiate internal democracy, equity, and justice.
If the APC leadership and elders want to hear the truth, they actually lost their moral authority to influence their federal lawmakers towards a desired result when they prevaricated on zoning and also failed to ensure that equity prevailed in allocation of substantive offices at the federal level among the various families (defunct political parties and splinter of parties) that make up the APC larger family. Some party leaders succeeded in goading the APC into clear preferential treatments for some contenders for the presiding officers positions of the National Assembly in such a way that left the New Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) family of the APC with absolutely nothing.  
After the controversial straw polls, substantive offices in the Federal Government, by APC’s proposal, were as follows: President Mohammadu Buhari (defunct CPC), Vice President Yemi Osibanjo (defunct ACN), Senate President Ahmed Lawn (defunct ANPP), Deputy Senate President George Akume (defunct ACN), Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila (defunct ACN), Deputy Speaker (defunct ANPP). It did not matter to the APC hierarchy that the nPDP brought five incumbent governors in addition to a good number of federal lawmakers and therefore contributed in no small measure to the party’s victory at the general elections.
Such treatment must have left people like Senator Bukola Saraki and Hon. Yakubu Dogara feeling like partial members of the APC family.  The show of disdain and discrimination was so barefaced that in the so-called straw poll for the Speakership, Dogara’s supporters were taken unawares, while Gbajabiamila and his supporters came well mobilized and prepared because they were obviously tipped off. House Members-elect were also made to write their names and the name of their preferred candidate. It was lie voting at gunpoint, against your conscience. Little wonder Dogara’s group walked out, while Senator Saraki and his supporters boycotted the straw poll for the Senate Presidency entirely. 
If the party was ever supreme, it vaporized once vaulting personal ambitions and interests of a few powerful party leaders took preeminence over the 1999 Constitution, parliamentary convention, internal democracy, justice, and equity. So, what the APC propagandists dubbed the ‘Saraki-Dogara rebellion’ is actually ‘APC injustice against Saraki and Dogara’.
It could be also be recalled that when Hon. Dogara accepted to cede the position of the Majority Leader to the “Loyalists”, with a proviso that it would not go to the South West and by implication, Hon. Gbajabiamila, since the zone already had the Deputy Speakership, the supremacists and their godfathers emotionally blackmailed President Muhammadu Buhari into eventually breaking his principle of non interference. Compelled, Dogara conceded the position to Gbajabiamila to massage Bola Tinubu’s battered ego. So, the party would have lost its ‘supremacy’ had another “Loyalist” like Hon. Ado Dogowa become the Majority Leader or the ‘Loyalists’ from the South East got the Deputy Majority Whip in line with federal character.
For Saraki, who would not succumb to such   tyranny against subsisting parliamentary convention, his wife suddenly became a guest of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission overnight.  But she had no immunity even as governor’s wife and also left office over five years ago. The Buhari we know would never go after Mrs. Saraki to get back at her husband, but it would be silly to vouch the same way for others who would induce and manipulate state institutions to achieve selfish ends.
It has never been the practice that Rules of a past Senate such as the 2011 Rules, which died with the 7th Senate, would apply to a new Senate such as the 8th Senate. Even the foot soldier of the APC tin gods like Senator Marafa who is promoting the lies along with his co-travelers in Senate disunity Forum, knows he was given 2011 Rules produced by the National Assembly management, not 2007 Rules, when he was first inaugurated a Senator in 2011 or the 6th Senate. So, if the 2015 Senate Rules are fake, where is the original?
My thinking is that it is up to Mr. President as the father of the APC to utilise the opportunity of this National Assembly recess to ensure that the APC regains its peace, groove, and focus. Those screaming ‘betrayal’ to divide him and National Assembly or its leadership simply want to run a ring around him. The good thing is that the National Assembly has been cooperative, approving all his requests and appointments, including a $75 World Bank Loan for Edo State. So, what does the President need from the National Assembly – party supremacy or cooperation? It is up to him to decide.
Ibrahim wrote from Keffi, Nassarawa State