UNCOVERED!!! SARAKI’S NEXT MOVE ON BUHARI

As more defections follow Monday’s dramatic and massive gale of defections at the National Assembly, indications are emerging now that this was just one of the series of actions the Senate President, Bukola Saraki plans to inflict on President Muhammadu Buhari and his former party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

These would be in response to the lengthened trauma they subjected him in their attempt to jail him for alleged code of conduct infraction. The Supreme Court weeks back exonerated Saraki of all charges brought against him by the federal government via the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), dismissing them as “hearsay”.

While the case dragged back and forth across almost every court in Nigeria from the CCT to the federal high court to the appeal court and all the way to the Supreme Court, Saraki had played the brinkmanship. he leveraged every bill, nomination and request from the President and every aspect of the executive arm to negotiate a truce but to no avail.

Sources reveal that he had even reached out to the President via different channels to drop the charges against him but met a brick wall. Reason why he told newsmen that later on Monday that the likelihood of his defection was high and that the pleas of his party was coming too late.

Among the numerous actions lined up in the political chess game between Saraki and Buhari we are reliably informed was to use the media to embarrass the Presidency by playing the brinkman.

This would include refusal to honour the police’ invitation which naturally would force them to go after him. The plan includes having media people to cover the arrest to create the impression that the head of Nigeria’s legislative arm was being victimized.  

It is expected that this move would create negative publicity for Buhari before the international community. A dimension the Presidency would not want the issue to assume.

Next stop would be to persuade more senators and members of the House of Representatives to leave the APC for the PDP and later join them in a grand event to be hosted in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

At the moment, the drive to get more governors to move over to the PDP from the APC was gathering momentum. Some of the governors were said to be jittery over the move given the consideration that Buhari was no pushover politically. This line of thinking is predicated on the fact that his major political advantage was the masses.  

The calculation was that the coalition that would be formed would wrestle power from the APC by targeting key strategic strongholds where Buhari has huge influence among the commoners who are his political backbone.