SaharaReporters
has learned from presidency sources that Senate President Bukola Saraki has
formed an alliance with a cabal within the Aso Rock Villa determined on
confusion and disorder rather than witness Acting President Yemi Osinbajo assume
full presidential powers.
The new
balance of forces emerges as the cabal has found it impracticable in the past
few weeks to bring back ailing President Muhammadu Buhari to the country.
Buhari's
doctors continue to insist he cannot function or run Nigeria in his present
state of health, but the cabal, which is using ethnicity and religious
sentiments to foment deep-seated animosity against the Acting President, has
continued to explore its options.
To that end,
it met recently in Saudi Arabia with Mr. Saraki, led by Isa Funtua, a failed
businessman who was owner of now bankrupt Bullet Construction Company, while
Saraki led some senators. Also in the Senate President’s group were Ahmadu
Adamu Mu'azu, a former Bauchi State Governor and ex-chairman of the Peoples
Democratic Party chairman who fled Nigerian on exile, as well as Bala Mohammed,
a former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory who is undergoing trial for
money laundering.
Our sources
say the cabal held several meetings with Saraki’s team, the senators included
having been sponsored to the lesser hajj on fat allowances from the coffers of
the National Assembly.
At the
meeting, the cabal decided on a number of options to force Acting President
Osinbajo out of power. The options include bringing Mr. Buhari to Nigeria in
whatever condition he might be. That plan was to use the gravely sick
president’s presence to implement their agenda by
insisting he
is not the first leader to become sick in office, citing those countries whose
leaders were sick but remained in office.
That option
created difficulties on account of Buhari's precarious condition, including
lapses of lucidity. Sometimes, says one of our
sources, the
president does not even remember where he is. Besides, Buhari often loses his voice
as a side effect of one of the drugs prescribed for him by UK doctors.
A second
option considered by the cabal was to force Mr. Osinbajo to accept current
Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, as the Vice President. In
that event, the cabal would prevail on President Buhari to resign, provided
that Mr. Osinbajo agreed to drop all corruption cases against senators and
withdraw the Federal Government’s appeal against a verdict of the Code of
Conduct Tribunal that cleared Mr. Saraki of charges that he violated asset
declaration laws. In addition, Mr. Osinbajo would commit to remove Ibrahim Magu
from the chairmanship of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
One source
said Mr. Saraki was opposed to the plan as he aspires to become the VP so as to
be assured of immunity from prosecution. However,
cabal
members favor Mr. Malami because they consider him somebody who comes from the
“core north” and would be more acceptable to their base, a profile Saraki does
not fit.
The third option
weighed by the cabal was to create enough political crisis in the country as to
provoke a military takeover of power. However, that option proved problematic
when Western diplomats sternly signaled that they would not accept a military
coup in Nigeria as such an intervention could lead to Nigeria's break up. Even
so, one of our sources said the cabal members had not altogether abandoned that
option.
On his
return from the hajj, Mr. Saraki held several meetings with senators loyal to
him and directed them not to entertain any motion calling for Mr. Buhari's
resignation unless his own position as the prospective VP was assured. On his
part, Mr. Isa Funtua met with numerous northern politicians, powerful civil
servants and military officers and warned that the North could not afford to
“lose power” to the Yoruba. He reminded them that, when former President Umaru
Yar’Adua died, the North ceded power to Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw man they
thought would be easy to manipulate. However, within a few months of assuming
the presidency, Mr. Jonathan, he claimed, gave all the important appointments
“to his people.” He stated that the Yoruba were
way too
smart to be left with power for the remainder of Mr. Buhari's term.
It is to be
noted that the sudden resurgence on Tuesday of senators’ obsession with
removing Mr. Magu was not a coincidence. Some top National Assembly sources
revealed that the demand for Magu to be fired was the first salvo in a planned
set of orchestrated moves meant to subvert the Nigerian constitution and avert
a potential Osinbajo presidency.
Osinbajo's
offense, according to the sources, is that he has stood solidly behind the
President in the nomination and preference of Mr. Magu as EFCC Chairman.
The
situation on Tuesday was so bad that while Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe was moving
a motion asking the Senate to declare Saraki “Acting President,” Mr. Osinabjo
was already back in Abuja from his trip to the African Union summit in Addis
Ababa.
Apparently,
Abaribe and Senator Kabir Marafa did not know, and Saraki shut down the motion
pretending as though he had no prior knowledge of it. However, several Senate
sources told SaharaReporters that Saraki had simply forgotten to inform Abaribe
and others involved in the plot that Osinbajo had returned to Abuja overnight.
What
Nigerians saw on Tuesday at the Senate was part of the pre-arranged onslaughts
against Osinbajo that were decided in Saudi Arabia between representatives of
the cabal and the Senate President’s team.
In keeping
with the agreements reached at their meetings in Saudi Arabia, Senator Saraki
and members of the cabal will in the next few weeks continue to heat up the
system and provoke disorder, in the hope of encouraging a military coup.
The two
groups’ fourth option is to cause enough problems for Osinbajo that he will
quietly resign because the coalition against him believes he is not a
politically ambitious person. That silent option is known as the "Shonekan
option," referring to how Ernest Shonekan was eased out by General Sani
Abacha in 1993 shortly after former President Ibrahim Babangida was forced out
by a military cabal in the wake of his annulment of the June 12 elections.
Under any of
the options, a source confided that Saraki believes that sooner or later, the
presidency will be his to pluck.
One
Presidency source asserted that cabal members who will provide logistics for
the move against Mr. Osinbajo include the current Director General of the
Department of State Services, Lawan Daura, who is said to be fully bothered
about his own fate because of tons of insider DSS petitions and queries about
him in the past and now. It is believed Saraki has offered him protection and
retention in office under the new deal.
Daura is
also expected to clamp down on social media and target social media users
including SaharaReporters. To achieve this objective, Daura has reportedly sent
a whole team of DSS operatives to Russia to figure out how to achieve a social
media shutdown.
The Chief of
Staff, Abba Kyari, who became the cabal's arrowhead, is said to have become
somewhat more cautions, even becoming close to Osinbajo, but our sources say
this is a strategy to elude scrutiny and suffer less pressure from the media,
especially as it has become clear Buhari may not return very soon, or in good
health. In the words of an Aso Rock source, "He has become much more
circumspect these days."
But the
Senate President, according to one principal Senate principal officer, is
"now the one calling the shots, calling meetings of service chiefs at his
residence to dish out instructions that ought to be coming from the Acting
President because some of the representatives of the cabal he met with in Saudi
Arabia told him they would prefer him to be the next president."
A senator
who pleaded anonymity said the preference for Saraki is simply based on their
shared horror of allowing Osinbajo to clinch power with Magu as EFCC chairman.
While the members from both sides try to couch the rhetoric in ethnic terms, according
to him, "the real driving force behind this new working arrangement is
that Saraki will be the first politician to create a thief paradise much like
IBB of years past."
Although not
trusted by many of the Senate's principal officials, Saraki continues to wield
considerable influence because of the amount of resources and money he has made
available to the officials, including financial gifts to a number of senators
using official and personal means.
Indeed the
Senate President, who was heavily implicated in the Panama Papers, is also
believed to have stolen at least N3.5 billion from the Paris Club refunds in
recent weeks. While two other governors indicted in stealing part of the funds
have quickly made refunds after they failed to get the protection they sought
from the presidency, Saraki has simply refused to return his own part of the
loot. And this partly explains his resolve to fight harder now, an informed
source explained.
He asked:
"We know Saraki is wily and full of treachery, everyone knows that, but
what do you expect some of us to do if he asks for our support? But Nigerians are not fools, the people will
sort him out.”
The source
went on: "Don't you remember how this man - Saraki - even ruthlessly
outwitted his own father and sister? The
man is currently not on speaking terms with Gbemisola Saraki and his brother
Olaolu. Or even more recently did you not see what he did to Senator Ali Ndume?
Ndume is still sitting in one corner sulking today."
That source
said, "What the Aso Rock cabal don't know about Saraki is that if he gets
what he really wants that is 2019 presidency ticket, he would deal with even
the cabal members first, particularly the DG, SSS."
According to
that particular Senator, "As we speak, Saraki has the case files against
the DG, SSS, including reports of how the Chief of Staff Kyari and Mamman Daura
handled some oil deals—especially strategic oil deals involving UAE early in
the administrations—without the knowledge of the president. When the president
found out through the UAE government, he was alarmed. Saraki has details of all these."
But another
source in the Senate concluded as follows: "Why these people are able to
run rings and play around the Buhari-Osinbajo presidency is because the
president has simply refused to use its huge but informal arsenal to deal with
either the Senate President or members of the Aso Rock Cabal."
Already,
Nigerians on social media have been very loud in their condemnation of the
Senate President, many of them hoping the presidency will act to call a spade a
spade and rid the nation of these foxes. Said one: “Somebody has to do it, this
nation is bleeding politically, this is needless and a waste of precious
time."
To counter
social media condemnation and backlash, Saraki has set up a number of trolls
operating principally from the APC headquarters in Ilorin and Abuja, and
through paid journalists and social media influencers, with the objective of
advancing his narrative and halting the assumption to the presidency of a man
he once dismissed as a mere "commissioner" when Mr. Osinbajo invited
him to a meeting in the early days of the Buhari Presidency.
It is also
understood that Saraki and his Senate friends are working assiduously to use
oil marketers to create a fuel scarcity that would bring about great hardship
and possibly kickstart the disorder he hopes to achieve. Those marketers have
been engaging in secret meetings where they insist the federal government must
pay them N650 billion in unverified debt. Senator Dino Melaye and one Senator
Philip Aduda are helping to set up the fuel sabotage that would lead to the
scarcity.
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