BusinessDay 22 Aug 2018

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18 BUSINESS DAY C002D5556 Wednesday 22 August 2018 Politics & Policy 2019: Buhari, Saraki naked fight: Who blinks first? INNOCENT ODOH, Abuja The disturbing war of words and the battle of wits between President Muhammadu Buhari led-Presidency backed by the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) led by Adams Oshiomhole, is in grim battle against the leadership of the National Assembly led by President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki. The political hostility has intensified barely six months to the 2019 general elections and the crisis has not shown a sign of abetting, judging by the hardening of positions of the principal belligerents and their acolytes. This crisis is traceable to the circumstances that led to the emergence of Saraki as the President of the Senate in June 2015, where Saraki’s maneuvers and deft political calculations and alliance with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) fetched him the coveted seat of the President of the Senate against the wishes of some APC bigwigs. Saraki then came under a flurry of corruption allegations, ranging from forging the Senate rules to his advantage, to the alleged false asset declaration. He was dragged before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) and was docked. The Buhari government probably sensing it would not make any headway in its quest to indict Saraki on account of the Senate rule withdrew the case. It however, continued to pursue that of false asset declaration until the Supreme Court ruled in July, 2018 that Saraki had no case to answer at the tribunal. Then the police started their own version and fingered Saraki as an alleged facilitator of the deadly Offa robbery incident, which left over 30 people dead including a pregnant woman and some policemen. Even as the police are still investigating the matter, it appears there was no clear evidence directly linking the President of the Senate to the incident. The Presidency and the APC leadership then devised new ways to harm the integrity of Saraki and to undermine his leadership through plots to impeach and remove him from office. The plot was said to have been hatched by the party and the police but the execution was horribly implemented on July 24, when the alleged plot by the police to cage Saraki in his residence to stop him from presiding over the defection of some APC federal lawmakers failed. How the President of the Senate Buhari beat the security phalanx mounted to barricade his movement remains a mystery, but it was a big blow to the APC as the Kwara lawmaker emerged in the National Assembly to read a list of 14 Senators, who defected from the ruling party to the PDP, even as similar scenario was replicated on the same day (July 24) in the House of Representatives where 37 members defected to the PDP and other parties. Barely a week later, Saraki in company of the Governor of Kwara state, Abdulfatah Ahmed, announced his defection to the PDP, an event that strengthened the APC wild indignation against him. Again, Saraki escaped another impeachment plot on August7, when hooded and well-armed men of the Directorate of the Security Service (DSS) invaded the National Assembly on the orders of the sacked DSS Director General, Lawal Daura, allegedly in cahoot with the APC leadership to instigate the impeachment of Saraki. The plan failed but since then neither the Presidency nor the APC leadership has given up hope to chase Saraki out of his seat as he has refused to yield their call for resignation. The Presidency commenced a new wave of the war on Sunday August 19. In a statement signed by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, the President said Bukola Saraki and the National Assembly should be held responsible for the delay in passing the supplementary budget for the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for 2019 general elections. The Presidency noted that President Muhammadu Buhari reluctantly signed the 2018 budget into law after it had been distorted by the National Assembly stressing that the National Assembly delayed the 2018 budget that was submitted on No- Saraki vember last year for seven months. It added that there was no way a supplementary budget could have been submitted without the passage of the main budget. The statement titled, “Senator Saraki, look at mirrow, it’s your face that’s in it”, the presidency absolved President Buhari from any blame in the supplementary budget delay. The statement read this, “The Presidency wishes to respond to the false accusations by Senator Bukola Saraki who alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari is to blame for the delay in approving the supplementary budget for INEC. “On the contrary, the Senate President should look into the mirror and what he will see is his own face. He is solely to be held responsible for deliberately driving the nation to this cliff edge as far as the preparations for next elections are concerned. “It is not true that INEC submitted their draft budget to the Presidency in February. No, it came much later but even then, this is not the real issue. The fact that their proposals came well after the President had laid his budget for the year 2018 before the National Assembly meant that their own will be sent as supplementary budget. This was clearly stated to them by the Minister of Budget and National Planning. “A supplementary budget cannot be submitted until the main budget is passed, and so the delay in passing the main budget was the reason for the delay. The National Assembly passed the 2018 budget seven months after the document was submitted to the National Assembly by President Buhari. “Unless someone has forgotten, the budget was submitted to the National Assembly and it took the Saraki-led National Assembly seven months to release it. There is no way President Buhari could have submitted a supplementary budget while the main one was still pending. It is never done. “Because Saraki did not return the main budget, we could not have submitted the supplementary one. “After the long delays, the President was pained to sign the much distorted, butchered and debauched document. In giving his assent, President Buhari said that he was compelled to sign the budget so as not to keep the economy continuously on a standstill. “In his words: “When I submitted the 2018 Budget proposals to the National Assembly on 7th November 2017, I had hoped that the usual legislative review process would be quick, so as to move Nigeria towards a predictable January-December financial year.” “It is also worthy of note that this is the first time in Nigeria’s history that a government would bring together the cost of an election in one budget, with each agency involved invited to defend their portion of the budget before the National Assembly. “It is all part of the transparency that this government is known for. In the past, governments would approve INEC budgets and funding without a breakdown, often using ways and means to fund it not so under President Buhari,” the statement said. However, Saraki’s media team through Olu Onemola, the Special Assistant on New Media to the President of the Senate on Sunday replied the Presidency, saying that Buhari’s statement is ‘conscientious ignorance’ on full display. Onemola stated that despite the unforced errors on the part of the Executive, which failed to submit the general elections budget on time, the relevant committees of the National Assembly are still working assiduously to ensure that due process is followed in approving the President’s request. The Saraki media aide quoted the famous ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ of the much respected the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which stated that “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” “It is necessary to begin this response to the Buhari Media Organization’s statement about the Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, by reminding us of this fact. This is because the statement issued in Abuja on Friday, August 17th, by the organization, is a careful and deliberate example of conscientious ignorance on full display. “By now, the Nigerian people are aware that the Executive branch could have submitted INEC’s 2019 Election budget at the time it submitted the 2018 appropriations proposal last year. Furthermore, the Executive had from January till June this year to submit the budget request. However, due to a perceived lack of foresight, display of usual tardiness or an attempt to ensure that due process would not be followed, this request was submitted only a few days before the statutory National Assembly annual recess. “Regardless of this unforced error on the part of the Executive, the National Assembly has continued its work on this budget. As it stands: the relevant Senate and House Committees have held individual budgetary hearings with the INEC Chairman and all his Commissioners on this budget. They have also held followup Joint Committee meetings to carefully scrutinize the provisions of the budget. “Furthermore, the Joint Committees are now scheduled to meet on Monday when they are expected to come up with a Committee report that will be sent to the Appropriations Committee, which will spell out how to source the President’s virement request through the concerned MDAs,” the statement said. Saraki’s media aide also noted that any person or organization that is conversant with legislative due process would know that it is only after the Appropriations Committee has worked on the budget details that a plenary sitting is required to adopt the final report. He said that the President of the Senate, the Senate and the entire National Assembly, are committed to ensuring that the 2019 elections receive all necessary funding stressing however, that this should not be at the expense of due process and stated guidelines. …Senators denounce APC, back Saraki In their reactions the chairman, Senate Committee on Navy, Senator Isah Hamma Misau and his counterpart in the Committee on Banking, Finance and Other Financial Institutions, Senator Rafiu Adebayo Ibrahim have advised the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its leaders its incessant attempts at looking for scapegoats for the failure to fulfill their promises to the electorate by constantly blaming the President of the Senate Bukola Saraki. Misau and Rafiu in a joint statement at the weekend stated that the APC leaders have continued to whine about what Saraki did or did not do to ensure the Buhari government failed without caring whether it was reasonable to believe that one single individual who had been continuously assailed by the government would at the same time be in a position to ground the government. “APC leaders are being clever by half. They have spent most of the last 38 months harassing Saraki and sponsoring media attacks against him. Now that the man has been vindicated by the courts and he has decided to leave their party, they have devised another propaganda stunt to start heaping the blames of their failure to bring positive change to Nigeria on Saraki. “For three years of the APC administration, former President Goodluck Jonathan was the scapegoat they blamed. Now that it dawned on them that nobody is listening to that tale by moonlight again, their propaganda machinery has shifted focus to Saraki as the new man to blame. These are characters who cannot take responsibility for their inability to provide good governance as they promised. “Must these people blame somebody all the time? Were they elected to bring in positive change or to shift blames? It is irresponsible for people invested with popular mandate to always look for somebody to be held responsible for their failure to fulfill their promises and give expression to the mandate they were given. “Instead of concentrating on how to use the next six months before the general elections to hasten the completion of infrastructure projects, enunciation of policies and initiation of programmes which can improve the standard of living of the people and ameliorate the consistent failure of the last three years, the APC is now led by demagogues who seem not to care if they bring the entire country down. “The new leadership of the APC has continued to advertise the inability of the party to manage victory, their penchant for violence as a way of saving their faces and their lack of the much needed temperament to wield together a country with diverse culture, ethnicity and religion like Nigeria.
Wednesday 22 August 2018 C002D5556 BUSINESS DAY 19 Politics & Policy How I will tackle poverty in AMAC/Bwari Federal Constituency- Female aspirant A female aspirant who desires to clinch the seat of the AMAC/ Federal Constituency of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in the House of Representatives, Zainab Marwa- Abubakar, has said if given the chance, she will offer a representation that will transform the lives of her constituents and reduce their poverty through strategic initiatives. In this interview with INNOCENT ODOH, the All Progressives Congress (APC) aspirant also said she stands with President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC for giving Nigeria a new direction of leadership despite the challenges the nation is facing. Excerpts: What motives you to contest under the ruling party the APC for the Bwari/AMAC Federal Constituency?My main motivation is service. I have a great interest in serving humanity in all spheres of social welfare, health, education, enlightenment and the like. I believe that the best way you can serve God is through serving people. My religion, Islam, tells me about serving people, generosity and caring for the less privileged. I realized that after so many years of working in the NGO world that probably doing it in a larger platform will expand my tentacles in the areas of service and that was when I fell in love with the idea of becoming a politician, the idea of becoming a member of the House of Representatives. You are in a very competitive race, so how far have you gone in making consultations with the stakeholders in your party and within your constituency, and how far do you think your effort will give you the ticket in your party? In terms of consultations, if you are talking about the primaries, we are trying our best. We have consulted with the people that matter while praying that God should help us because at the end of the day, power comes from God. As you said, it is very competitive we have about 9 people competing for the same seat in the constituency. In concrete terms, what kind of representation will you offer the people of your constituency judging by so many of the challenges that they now have in the present time? As I said, I work with NGOs. I am the President of ZMACO Foundation and through the NGOs; we have undertaken so many programme and projects. When I meet with people in the FCT, I always tell them about the things that I have done in the past. When I am talking about my manifesto, I always mention what I know I can deliver based on my track record of service delivery, in terms to improving the quality of lives of those within AMAC and Bwari. We are focused on education especially that of children. When you go to schools these days you see they have become an eyesore, which is unacceptable in 2018. We have to understand the fact that when you want your children to learn, they have to enjoy a level of comfort. That also shows that the Nigerian children are very resilient and amazing kids because they are able to learn and absorb information even in the direst circumstances. We want to provide Zainab the infrastructure and create conducive environment for learning. We have to also look at health. There was a lady that lost her three kids because of inadequate care in the hospital and I find that also unacceptable. I find out that so many of the health challenges in Nigeria right now and in the FCT are things that are avoidable. We have lack of free antenatal, lack of affordable education, lack of affordable health care and lack of enlightenment. We still have people who don’t go to hospital to give birth around the satellite towns in the FCT because they don’t have hope in the system the rather give birth at home. Women are dying every day from hemorrhage. So we have education in our mind, we have quality health care in our mind and we also have the issue of the People with Disabilities (PWDs). Most of the places you go to in the FCT have no facilities for PWDs whether you are blind or you cannot walk, or you cannot hear, there is hardly any facilities for them. When you go abroad, you find out that most of the bus stations have some sort of brail what the blind people use to read even on the road. We don’t have such things and I hope to develop them in FCT. We have people with disabilities but they are kept away as if they are not human. So we will work to address that. We also have issues do to with the environment. We have a really good programme called Operation Sweep and it deals with sanitizing the environment. Gone are the days when we cared about our environment, today see people living near gutters, near wastes and they don’t care because they are so used to not being cared for. You see people burning refuse day and night, so we have to put a stop to that. These wastes can be turned into treasure. You have women that are cooking with firewood and the black carbon is killing them. So some of these things we should look into and stop ignoring them. You can easily take these wastes, turn it into briket and the women can use it to cook. It does not emit the black carbon, it is safer, and it is cleaner for their health. We are also talking about empowerment for the women and the youth. Most of the initiatives that I see are people just buying grinding machine and tricycle (keke NAPEP) and throw them on people and they are forced to use them. What I want to offer is a ward-to-ward initiative and also a tailored –to- fit initiative. We need to really go and find out what people really want to do. We need to find out their passion in life. If I enjoy making hair and you give me grinding machine you have not really helped me because I will probably sell the machine and move on or the work will be so tedious for me. If you know that I want to be a hair stylist and you give me the things that a hair stylist needs, give me the necessary training, you will find out that I will do well because passion is very important. So by the grace of God the empowerment that we want to do for all the citizens of Abuja in skill acquisition will include those that we have interviewed and gotten to know what they want. But if we cannot give them the training immediately, we source the training. This is the age of technology everything is at the finger tips. We can easily train people on whatever they want to do; we can give them single digit interest soft loan, so that people can actually pay back. These are things that I have done with my NGO and these are things that I am 100% sure I can deliver and that is why I made these promises in my manifesto. I have so many plans and ideas but I am going to leave that till God puts me in the seat. Being a woman, you are faced with some challenges in this contest. What are these challenges? Everybody talk about funding. Funding is very important. Unfortunately in Nigeria today the name of the game is money politics. If you cannot play it you have to go home. Everything revolves around money and it is understandable. I did not understand it before but being in the game now, I understand. So funding is a very big issue but for me it is not the main issue. The main issue is not being taken seriously. When you come out to run for office in Nigeria especially as a woman, who perhaps lacks the financial or political clout like someone like me that is coming for the first time, you have this issue of not being taken seriously. Then when you speak you have to watch you words and watch your steps, there are so much stigma attached to being a female politician especially in the north being a Muslim woman. But these things don’t affect me at all because I have already put my mind to serving the people. As for the funding, we shall continue to agitate for international donors, government and private organisations to come to the aid of women that are really trying to make a difference. What I also think that is important is that the political parties should demonstrate gender equality as their main agenda. We also need the 35% female representation as the first lady is also agitating. We are trying to move against the current. I have a forum for female aspirants to run and trying to get us together under one umbrella for the APC and see how we can agitate for a better representation especially with the primaries coming in just over a month. But if God give me the grace, I will show them that a woman can deliver. With current state of the Nigerian economy, the insecurity and social tension being generated towards the2019 election, how would you rate the APC government under President Muhammadu Buhari in the last three years? I will honestly rate the party very highly. I commend President Muhammadu Buhari, I commend him whole heartedly because what we must appreciate is that sometimes when you want to start a journey, it may turn out differently. The President and his team and even Foreigners who do Compliance and Evaluation measures have said that the way Nigeria was to the where the President has brought us to be, he has done a good job. Talking about social tension, insecurity and the state of the economy, I believe that things have been bad and getting worse for some time now but it is not something that just emerged over night. I strongly believe that if given the chance to run another four years the President will bring Nigeria where we Nigerians want it to be. So I stand firmly behind the president, I stand firmly behind my party-APC and I encourage Nigerians to stand firmly behind our president, he is doing his best and he is doing some good work for us but we should not expect a miracle out of him. He has done his best from what he met on ground and now is the time for us to cast our hope and cast our hope for him. The APC has been in turmoil following the gale of defections that hit it in the run up to the 2019 elections, especially the defection of the President of the Senate Bukola Saraki. This appears to have unsettled the party. Does this not portend danger for your party ahead of the elections? I don’t think this turmoil is good for my party or any party or even a household. Nigeria is a country where the political parties do not have distinct ideologies, so people tend to run from party to party. But the APC has more dignity, is more commendable than any other party in Nigeria and that is why I am proud to be a member of the APC. So even if half of the APC leaves it does not change anything. What is happening in APC is unfortunate but I really believe that the party will scale through; I believe that the same people that pushed the party from the beginning will continue to do so. But we should recruit more youths. If the APC fails to give you the ticket to contest the election will you go to another party? I have lion’s heart and a winner’s mentality, so anything that I do, I do with mind of winning. So I hope to win by the grace of God I will certainly win. But as you ask if I don’t get the party’s ticket will I go to another party and I say never. I am extremely loyal; I will remain with the APC. There is menace of vote buying threatening the democratic space. What is your reaction to this? With all due respect, the people at the grassroots are only remembered during election time. So that is the only time they can eat. So when person X is running for an election, he will look for people and give them 10,000, 20,000 even some are sharing cars, sharing lots of money and what happened is when they win and the person gets to office, they completely forget the people because that 10,000 has bought their votes. That is why the politicians neglect the welfare, education and health of the people. But 2019 will be different. The people will collect the money and vote their conscience.
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