Those who have come close to Saraki say the man has a distasteful and arrogant swagger about him, a trait he demonstrated tremendously as governor of Kwara State. In his fangled obsession for unquestioning loyalty, Saraki is also said to consider his positions and appointments based on what personal benefits he could derive from such. While it may not be just the question of alleged integrity deficit that haunt Saraki, in his political rebellion to emerge Senate President, his politics going forward, would also come into very sharp focus.
A medical doctor by training, Saraki seems adept at diagnosing political sentiments and prescribing appropriate remedies to his advantage. At a cursory look, Saraki’s initials, ABS, conveys the idea of an automatic breaking system usually installed on cars. It is no surprise that in Kwara politics, ABS, has been playing the role of political gatekeeper, and the buck obviously stops at his desk. Before ascending the Senate Presidency, Saraki took the art of political rebellion to new levels, after he vanquished his father in a political uprising and ambush. While serving out his second term as Governor in 2011, Saraki staged one of the most remarkable acts of political rebellion, squaring up against his father by putting up his friend and former Finance commissioner under his administration, Abdulfattah Ahmed as a rival governorship candidate on the platform of the PDP, his former party. Against his father’s designs and desire to make his sister, Gbemisola, succeed him, ABS’s candidate won. And with the successful routing of his father and sister, ABS undoubtedly became the new political godfather of Kwara State. This path was laid out on his success at the poll to represent Kwara Central in the Senate!
And while he was engaged in that political muscle-flexing and show of bravado against his father, Saraki aspired to the Presidency but that ambition was thwarted by the consensus agreement by northern elders that did not recognize him as a candidate to represent the geopolitical zone. Saraki took his discrimination on the consensus with unbecoming equanimity and learnt some useful lessons: that he is considered more a Yoruba than a northerner! Armed with that awareness, Saraki tried to warm himself into the Jonathan presidency such that many northern politicians believed he was actually prompted by Jonathan to join the presidential contest in 2011. Saraki however sought and got elected into the Senate and prior to entering the Senate in 2011, he surrogated his office as Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, (NGF) to Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi.
From thence he plotted and waited. That opportunity presented itself in August 2013 when five PDP governors including former vice president Atiku Abubakar staged a walkout in the middle of the party’s mini convention, with the President watching in disbelief. Saraki had been waiting for this moment and seized the opportunity with both hands, throwing his support behind the rebel governors in what became known as the new PDP (nPDP). By associating himself and his protégé Amaechi with the nPDP, Saraki added momentum to the faction, making their entry into the newly registered APC impactful. A shrewd politician, Saraki knew the APC decision to admit the nPDP en bloc into their fold, was a political error borne out of their desperate quest for national recognition. And it has become a poisoned chalice.
Having crossed over to the APC like his other co-travelers in the nPDP, Saraki secured another victory to represent Kwara Central in the Senate for a second term. Like a grand political chess master, Saraki was quick to see the APC failure to win an outright majority as an opportunity to seek the Senate presidency. Saraki recognized that the main point of disagreement in his former party was Jonathan’s insistence on contesting the 2015 presidency and knew for a fact that PDP Senators-elect, most of whom were his colleagues in the Governors’ Forum will grant him the “right of first refusal” when considering whom to support in the Senate leadership elections. This realization made Saraki confident enough to spurn the straw poll for APC lawmakers who picked Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila as APC candidates for
Senate President and House Speaker. The 11th hour joker pulled by the APC Senators pushing the election of Lawan was a very dangerous strategy, which collapsed before it could be useful. Of course, through that tiny crack, the smoke of rebellion had entered the APC. Saraki’s election marked the climax of one of the most intense political manipulation, intrigues and horse-trading.
But the effect of his vaulting ambition would be seen how he uses the Senate Presidency as a launching pad to renew his ambition to be Nigeria’s president, now that he has crossed the political radar of entrenched power centers in the APC, including President Buhari, who have noted his impudence and cheeky public display of self-serving arrogance. The battle lines have been drawn. Like Samson in the Bible, Saraki could gloat over his victory, but the danger in his recent political perfidy is that the roof might finally collapse on his head this time around. It remains to be seen how Saraki’s ambition would prove that rebellion can be a positive aspect of political sagacity because in politics, unlike anything else, the end seems to always justify the means!