The President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki and
Governor of Kwara State, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed have formally dumped the All
Progressives Congress (APC) for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), reports ITRealms.
For industry observers, both moves by Saraki and Ahmed, to
return to PDP was a return to home party as they jointly decamped in 2014
following a coalition that gave birth to APC.
Senate President in his resignation letter to Nigerians dated
July 31, 2018 and made available to ITRealms,
said this is coming after extensive consultations, “I have decided to take my
leave of the All Progressives Congress (APC).”
According to him, this is not a light decision, stressing
that “If anything at all, I have tarried for so long and did all that was
humanly possible, even in the face of great provocation, ridicule and flagrant
persecution, to give opportunity for peace, reconciliation and harmonious
existence.”
Further, “Perhaps, more significantly, I am mindful of the
fact that I carry on my shoulder a great responsibility for thousands of my
supporters, political associates and friends, who have trusted in my leadership
and have attached their political fortunes to mine. However, it is after an
extensive consultation with all the important stakeholders that we have come to
this difficult but inevitable decision to pitch our political tent elsewhere;
where we could enjoy greater sense of belonging and where the interests of the
greatest number of our Nigerians would be best served.
“While I take full responsibility for this decision, I will
like to emphasise that it is a decision that has been inescapably imposed on me
by certain elements and forces within the APC who have ensured that the minimum
conditions for peace, cooperation, inclusion and a general sense of belonging
did not exist.
“They have done everything to ensure that the basic rules of
party administration, which should promote harmonious relations among the
various elements within the party were blatantly disregarded.
“All governance principles which were required for a healthy
functioning of the party and the government were deliberately violated or
undermined. And all entreaties for justice, equity and fairness as basic
precondition for peace and unity, not only within the party, but also the
country at large, were simply ignored, or employed as additional pretext for
further exclusion.
“The experience of my people and associates in the past
three years is that they have suffered alienation and have been treated as
outsiders in their own party. Thus, many have become disaffected and
disenchanted. At the same time, opportunities to seek redress and correct these
anomalies were deliberately blocked as a government-within-a-government had
formed an impregnable wall and left in the cold, everyone else who was not
recognized as “one of us”. This is why my people, like all self-respecting
people would do, decided to seek accommodation elsewhere.
“I have had the privilege to lead the Nigerian legislature
in the past three years as the President of the Senate and the Chairman of the
National Assembly. The framers of our constitution envisage a degree of benign
tension among the three arms of government if the principle of checks and
balances must continue to serve as the building block of our democracy. In my
role as the head of the legislature, and a leader of the party, I have ensured
that this necessary tension did not escalate at any time in such a way that it
could encumber Executive function or correspondingly, undermine the
independence of the legislature. Over the years, I have made great efforts in
the overall interest of the country, and in spite of my personal predicament,
to manage situations that would otherwise have resulted in unsavoury
consequences for the government and the administration. My colleagues in the
Senate will bear testimony to this.
“However, what we have seen is a situation whereby every
dissent from the legislature was framed as an affront on the executive or as
part of an agenda to undermine the government itself. The populist notion of
anti-corruption became a ready weapon for silencing any form of dissent and for
framing even principled objection as “corruption fighting back”. Persistent
onslaught against the legislature and open incitement of the people against
their own representatives became a default argument in defence of any
short-coming of the government in a manner that betrays all too easily, a
certain contempt for the Constitution itself or even the democracy that it is
meant to serve.
“Unfortunately, the self-serving gulf that has been created
between the leadership of the two critical arms of government based on distrust
and mutual suspicion has made any form of constructive engagement impossible.
Therefore, anything short of a slavish surrender in a way that reduces the
legislature to a mere rubber stamp would not have been sufficient in procuring
the kind of rapprochement that was desired in the interest of all. But I have
no doubt in my mind, that to surrender this way is to be complicit in the
subversion of the institution that remains the very bastion of our democracy. I
am a democrat. And I believe that anyone who lays even the most basic claim to
being a democrat will not accept peace on those terms; which seeks to
compromise the very basis of our existence as the parliament of the people.
“The recent weeks have witnessed a rather unusual attempts
to engage with some of these most critical issues at stake. Unfortunately, the
discord has been allowed to fester unaddressed for too long, with dire
consequences for the ultimate objective of delivering the common good and
achieving peace and unity in our country. Any hope of reconciliation at this
point was therefore very slim indeed. Most of the horses had bolted from the
stable.
“The emergence of a new national party executives a few
weeks ago held out some hopes, however slender. The new party chairman has
swung into action and did his best alongside some of the Governors of APC and
His Excellency, the Vice President. I thank them for all their great efforts to
save the day and achieve reconciliation. Even though I thought these efforts
were coming late in the day, but seeing the genuine commitment of these
gentlemen, I began to think that perhaps it was still possible to reconsider
the situation.
However, as I have realized all along, there are some others
in the party leadership hierarchy, who did not think dialogue was the way
forward and therefore chose to play the fifth columnists. These individuals
went to work and ensured that they scuttled the great efforts and the good
intentions of these aforementioned leaders of the party. Perhaps, had these
divisive forces not thrown the cogs in the wheel at the last minutes, and in a
manner that made it impossible to sustain any trust in the process, the story
today would have been different.
“For me, I leave all that behind me. Today, I start as I
return to the party where I began my political journey, the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP).
“When we left the PDP to join the then nascent coalition of
All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2014, we left in a quest for justice, equity
and inclusion; the fundamental principles on which the PDP was originally built
but which it had deviated from. We were attracted to the APC by its promise of
change. We fought hard along with others and defeated the PDP.
“In retrospect, it is now evident that the PDP has learnt
more from its defeat than the APC has learnt from its victory. The PDP that we
return to is now a party that has learnt its lessons the hard way and have
realized that no member of the party should be taken for granted; a party that
has realized that inclusion, justice and equity are basic precondition for
peace; a party that has realized that never again can the people of Nigeria be
taken for granted.
“I am excited by the new efforts, which seeks to build the
reborn PDP on the core principles of promoting democratic values; internal
democracy; accountability; inclusion and national competitiveness; genuine
commitment to restructuring and devolution of powers; and an abiding belief in
zoning of political and elective offices as an inevitable strategy for managing
our rich diversity as a people of one great indivisible nation called Nigeria.
“What we have all agreed is that a deep commitment to these
ideals were not only a demonstration of our patriotism but also a matter of
enlightened self-interest, believing that our very survival as political elites
of this country will depend on our ability to earn the trust of our people and
in making them believe that, more than anything else, we are committed to
serving the people.
“What the experience of the last three years have taught us
is that the most important task that we face as a country is how to reunite our
people. Never before had so many people in so many parts of our country felt so
alienated from their Nigerianness. Therefore, we understand that the greatest
task before us is to reunite the county and give everyone a sense of belonging
regardless of region or religion.
“Every Nigerian must have an instinctive confidence that he
or she will be treated with justice and equity in any part of the country
regardless of the language they speak or how they worship God. This is the
great task that trumps all. Unless we are able to achieve this, all other claim
to progress no matter how defined, would remain unsustainable.
“This is the task that I am committing myself to and I
believe that it is in this PDP, that I will have the opportunity to play my
part. It is my hope that the APC will
respect the choice that I have made as my democratic right, and understand that
even though we will now occupy a different political space, we do not
necessarily become enemies unto one another.”
Chuks Egbune/GEe
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