Anybody Talking About 2019 Election now is Irresponsible - Saraki

Senate President Bukola Saraki opened up on the intrigues which played out in the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the run-up to the Tuesday, June 9 inauguration of the 8th National Assembly.

He spoke on President Muhammadu Buhari’s awaited ministerial list, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and how much the Senate takes from the national treasury, among others. ADETUTU FOLASADE-KOYI was there.

There was a story that in 1979, your late father contested to be Senate President and was a threat to the preferred candidate. We heard that on the day of the inauguration of the Senate, he was invited by the then President Shehu Shagari and by the time he came back from the meeting, Senator Joseph Wayas was already on the seat as the Senate President. Is there any link between 1979 and 2015?

(General laughter) I think people are just creating stories and expressing issues. Honesty, nobody in his wildest calculation ever thought that Senators would not be present on the day of inauguration. In my own view, most of those who worked closely with us would be surprised at the outcome of the election because I worked hard. I had direct contact with every single Senator. I was not relying on anybody. Even within our party, I worked hard and was in touch with everybody, seeing them, talking to them and we began to build confidence. Also, on the other side, the Peoples Democratic Party, I was talking to them. That was the reason I laughed when people said that I had a deal that led to the emergence of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as deputy senate president. I did not strike any deal with Ekweremadu to win.  I did not need a deal because as I said, I worked hard. Everybody who was a Senator, I was canvassing and campaigning for their votes and some of you will remember the meeting we held at the Transcorp Hotel which former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio co-chaired with Senator Ibrahim Gobir. If you heard most of them there, the position they were taking was that ‘this is the Senate President we want’. This was not on any party line. Those who came from PDP, their view was that  ‘this is the Senate President we believe in and we believe can lead us.’ So, when I heard people talking about a deal, it is strange to me. Our success was because one was able to convince a lot of our colleagues and they accepted that this is the person that was going to lead and as such, the outcome of the Senate Presidency election was positive. But the fact is that we worked hard for it and also prayed about it. We campaigned and won the confidence of our colleagues, even within the APC itself. I believed that the way the events turned out was some evidence of faith and destiny because sometimes, I sit down and still wonder how some of our colleagues found themselves in the ICC. I mean, if there had been a situation where the CNA announced that the event had been postponed, it would have been a different thing. I am sure if you ask some of my colleagues what actually happened, they will not find an answer to it other than that there must be a hand of faith and destiny.

Your emergence was against your party’s wish but the party leadership later accepted. When the party nominated principal officers, one would have thought that in order to mend fences, you would have accepted their nominees. People will think it is a case of a man who defeated his party twice.

Let me take the first question where you say that my emergence was not the party’s position. We have it on record that at no time did the party say it had zoned this position to a particular zone. Soon after the election, the party held a meeting at the caucus level. At the caucus level, there was a working document that the party presented, which showed that it has zoned the Senate Presidency to North-Central but at the meeting, it was rejected and thus, the party needed to go back and work on the paper. We waited for the party but there was no follow up. Then, we started hearing rumour that the party was thinking that it might consider not holding on to that proposal from the National Working Committee that the Senate Presidency should be zoned to the North-Central and may be, it will be given to the North-East. Then, the governors got involved, held their own meeting and also recommended North-Central. All we were waiting for was for the party to announce that the position has been zoned to North-Central but, all of a sudden, the leaders of the party categorically came and said there was no zoning. If the party had said it had zoned this position to the North-East, Abubakar Bukola Saraki would never have contested for the office of Senate President. But the party said there was no zoning and that it would use merit and all that. It also said anybody from the two zones can contest. That was the point number one. On the issue of procedure of the emergence of the principal officers of the party, it is true that the party did send a letter but as you all know, we are guided by the Constitution and the Standing Orders of the Senate. These are two documents that I have taken an oath to ensure that whatever I do as the Senate President, I will abide by their rules. And also, by parliamentary practices and procedures and things that are done as convention, you know that the contents of that letter clearly was not the norm or what they practice in that place. It generally has been the convention that majority of these positions go to the different caucuses of the party and from there, the party meets and recommends. This Senate President is just first among equals. I do not have any executive power over my colleagues and some of you know the effort I made over the last 48 hours, particularly in the North-East zone, to appeal to some of our Senators to see whether they will agree with the party position but at the end of the day, my hands were tied. All one could do was to appeal and at the end of the day, we must be guided by the Standing Orders and by the Constitution. Again, this letter by our party chairman, all the Senators knew the content of the letter, not that it was known only to me. So, there were opportunities also in those zones to implement the content or leave it. It was really dependent on the wishes of those Senators. The point should not be to hold me responsible for the actions of those colleagues of mine because it would be very unfair. The positions they took were those in line with our Constitution and Standing Orders. In that area, it would be unfair to say that the party was defeated twice. I remember in 2011, we saw how leaders emerged. In the previous Senate, we saw how the nominees emerged and I do not think this one has been any different from how the previous ones have emerged. That area is very important and it is clear. So, we should not give impression that the party’s position was jettisoned. Some of these letters from the party are normally addressed to the caucuses of the party and not to the plenary session of the Senate. And at the end of the day, what I was reading was their decision, not mine. I was only reading the decision of the caucuses of the Senators in the zones, not my decision or my directives. And those are the people according to our Standing Orders and the Constitution that have the right to make those decisions. In any case, the party had also demonstrated some inconsistencies on the matter. On Friday, June 19, the party chairman called me and said they were sending a letter to my office. I said they should send it. In the letter, of which I had seen the copy, the party only zoned the positions and principal officers and directed the senate caucus of the APC to fill it. No name was put against any of the positions. Then, they recalled the letter, obviously after somebody had mounted pressure on them. They then wrote the last one which they specifically allocated to individual senators. That is the inconsistency we are talking about.

Why did you not read the letter from the South-West Caucus?

Because I have not received their letter but they communicated to me later that day that their letter should be ready by the end of the business last Friday. I do not know whether they would have submitted it. I did not want to do anything that was not strictly official. I knew that they had no objection to a particular candidate but I wanted to be sure I got a letter from their caucus like others did and that was the reason I did not announce any name. Their letter has not arrived but they have conveyed to me that they have gotten nine or 10 signatures and are waiting for two or three remaining to sign but some of them were not around and that was the reason their letter was delayed.

There is supposed to be a situation of give-and-take but people are reading meaning to what is happening as a situation of winner-takes-all. 

I think you are very right and that is what I was saying. If you check, you will find out that I made a plea. There was only one particular zone that had issues and that was the North-East zone. In other zones, there was a general consensus on the direction they were going. But in a scenario where you have over 75 per cent  of the Senators holding on to a very strong position, it makes things very difficult and I appealed to them to review it. I also had the opportunity to sit with Senator Ahmed Lawan as part of my reconciliation efforts. Some of the good news that have come out of the reconciliation is not in the public domain or reported because I am confident that this matter will fizzle out and blow away. We are making effort to begin to engage ourselves because these are two groups that never had problems. I did say to Senator Lawan when we sat down to talk that he should try and reach out to his members in the North-East so that they can come together to begin to engage themselves. The idea is that beyond the issue of leadership, they must work together as a caucus because there will be many issues that would be sent to the caucuses to go and discuss and there must be unity there. I must say that on Senator Lawan’s own part too, I could see that efforts are being made. I want you also to understand that it is just two weeks after election. It is normal that after election for this kind of position that was fiercely contested, there would be sentiments and emotions. If you can remember, after the presidential primaries, for weeks, there were people today who are now pretending to love President Buhari more than us, yet, they did not attend rallies! They sat in their houses and we were begging them! What I am saying is that two weeks, to me, is short in a healing process and I am sure that if you look at the mood the first day we resumed and the mood today, you will see that peace will come. As someone who has taken this position, I will not stop until I see a full healing process, full reconciliation. I am a fair-minded person and I will be fair to everybody because everybody has contributed for us to get here. Things have happened unfortunately but it cannot be winner-takes-all. Everybody must be part of that process and we will get there. We are not entirely there but I believe that in the few weeks within this period of recess, by the time we come back, we would be able to get closer and closer as a united APC family. I am sure that by the time we come back, with full leadership in place, we will be better off than where we are now and that responsibility is mine. I will prefer my actions to speak more than what I say. Just come back in two months time, I am confident that this will be a thing of the past. We will unite because we are all responsible and we know the issue before us are greater than this. Even in states where people contest for elections and lose out, it takes time for full reconciliation to take place and I believe we will get there in ensuring there is full reconciliation.

Since your emergence, have you met with President Muhammadu Buhari and Senator Bola Tinubu? If you have, What did they tell you?

First, it has been the view of some of us Senators that what Mr. President wants to see as a father is genuine reconciliation among us as a group and his position is that he will like us to unite so that he is not seen to be on one side or the other. I think those steps are going on. As regards Asiwaju Tinubu, as you know, he is one of the leaders of the party and I have great respect for him. Two of us have worked very closely together on major issues in the party leading to issue that were very important at different stages in the development of our party. Unfortunately, in this matter, as much as one wants to win the support of all forces within, it happened like that and I think at the end of the day, we will look at the things we have done together that have gone well. Yes, it is a setback but I do not think that that in any way was what will dictate the kind of relationship that we have. We are both responsible and committed to the project of the party and Nigeria. We will overcome this and move forward. It is our intention, as part of the healing process to be able to do that and it will happen.

There is the general belief that Tinubu did not want to support you because as a Senate President, you will be too powerful and also the issue of 2019 Presidency…

I hear a lot about this 2019 and honestly, I feel very sad that people are talking about 2019 now. The reason I am saying this is because the challenges ahead of us are enormous. We went round, I particularly spent less time in my state during our campaigns. I was campaigning with Mr. President and I had the opportunity of going round parts of the country and I must tell you that the aspirations, expectations of Nigerians are high. We have a lot of work to do and I cannot understand how responsible politicians, knowing the kind of challenges that we have, will begin to talk about 2019! First of all, the challenges that we have in meeting the expectations of the people, assuming we are even in a buoyant economy, is huge. Then, unfortunately, we are in a situation where the world economic recession, with the drop in oil price is going to affect the challenges ahead. How, then, can we leave those challenges and be talking about 2019? I find that to be very irresponsible. I do not want to be part of it. It is not on my radar. What is paramount to me now is Nigeria. Some of us took a lot of risks, made a lot of sacrifices, left our own party against everything, went round, campaigned, sold an agenda to the people. We have to deliver and that is my focus. I want people to desist from this because it shows that either we are not committed to what we want to do for Nigeria or we are not sincere if we are talking about 2019. Honestly, anybody that talks about 2019 must be very irresponsible.

What is your view on nomination of ministers and Mr. President’s position to select them against the party’s plea to be carried along in the process?

We have elected Mr. President as a leader of the party. I believe he will find candidates he believes are fit and good for the offices. I am sure in most cases, too, it will be in consultation with party leaders. There cannot be a rigid position. There will be a hybrid. There would be the candidates that he wants and also, in taking those decisions, you know that it is not possible for one man to know the entire 36 states. He might have a good knowledge of people in certain states but in some states, too, I am sure he will ask people about candidates he wants to appoint as ministers. What is key is for us to have a right team that will support him because he is heading that team and at the end of the day, he can be happy with who he works with. So, we can say that the prerogative in that process would be his. The process of getting there is ongoing.

What are the terms of reference of the Senate Finances Committee you inaugurated last week, and how will it bring transparency to the Eighth Senate?

In my opening comments, I said the success of the Eighth Senate and my success depends on the media. When a newspaper says the wardrobe allowance is N8.4 billion and it is far from the truth, it does not help issues. First of all, it is not National Assembly members who decide what their salary is. It is the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and that information is available for anybody to check. And part of the responsibilities I took on immediately I assumed office was to invite the Commission to pay me a courtesy call and they came. Before everybody, I asked them if we decide salaries, they said no. I asked who decides and they said they do. What is the wardrobe allowance? They said it was N42,000 per month. If you multiply N42,000 by 12, you will get about N504,000. If you multiply that N42,000 per month by the number of legislators in both chambers, assuming House of Representatives members earn equal amount, 390 members multiplied by N500,000, it comes to N180million compared to N8.4 billion. Look at the discrepancy! Sometimes, some of these reports can create problems. I agree with you and that was the reason I said in my opening remarks that in this Eighth Senate, under my leadership, I will ensure there is openness and transparency in the finances. Despite all these issues going on about the elections, I made sure that the work of the Senate stays focused. Immediately after my speech, I followed it up by setting up a committee to look at the openness of our budget and its framework and looked at the areas of the budget that needs review. Few days back, we inaugurated the committee and we gave them one week to report back. So, you can see clearly that this is an issue that is dear to my heart, an issue that I want to address and I am confident that we will be able to come up with something that would show a departure from what used to be there in the past.

Few days ago, you set up a committee on that, what should Nigerians expect from the Eighth Senate?

In the Eighth Senate, we must connect to the Nigerian people. People need to know how the 390 honourable members and 109 Senators impact their lives. We must be able to make laws that have direct impact on people’s lives. If we address the issue of the Judiciary as we talked about, if you are talking about making Nigeria attractive to investors, we must have our procedures, especially on the civil side that encourages that. One of the things that are difficult in commercial agreement or commercial dispute is that some commercial disputes last five to 10 years by procedures and a lot of businessmen will think that this is not an environment to invest. They must be able to have some of these issues resolved at the shortest period of time. We must review those procedures to make our environment more attractive to foreign investors. The second one is our fiscal challenges. It is clear that on our revenue side, we are going to have a lot of problems. You can see the level of borrowing we have, you can also see the budget of 2015, there is very little capital expenditure there. Yes, we will diversify our economy, we will bring up laws to make mining attractive, make agriculture attractive but those are medium and long term things. They are not something that can happen in months. While we are doing that, we must say that even in this oil sector, is it possible that we can improve the revenue we are generating by ensuring we block all the loopholes? Look at oil theft, we cannot as a society continue to say that we must live with the fact that people steal our oil. Are we the only ones producing the oil? Why is it that in other countries, we do not hear about that? So, we must, again, act on those issues to push the revenue up and create more money for the executive side to implement their budget. Again, in NNPC and other agencies that earn revenue, we must ensure we block all leakages. There must also be things like our electoral processes and also, our own practices. The way we run the Senate must change. An example of this is the finances we have talked about. My own view is that there must be a better co-operation between the Senate and the House of Representatives. The House cannot pass a bill in 2015 and then, the Senate cannot look at it until 2018 and at the end of the day, nothing works. My hope is that by the time we have our own legislative agenda, there must be some kind of talks with the House of Representatives so that we have unity of purpose. Even though there are five, six or seven bills, we should know that these bills are very instrumental to our development and ensure we work together to fast-track their passage. There must be efficiency on our own side. Some of the other procedures that we do to improve debate must be put in place. Senators should be better prepared for discussions and other in-house things we need to do to make us more efficient. We will also talk about making our Senators reach out to their constituencies better for people to know what we are doing in the Senate. We hope that at the end of our four years, we definitely would be able to put the Senate on a level that is better than we met it.

How would you react to public perception that members of the National Assembly are not gentlemen when they see your colleagues fighting in the chamber over leadership positions?

Honestly, it was unfortunate but if we have taken certain necessary steps, I do not think all these would happen. We must respect the wishes of the members of the National Assembly. Yes, as part of the party, you must work with them but working with them is different from directing the Senator and there must be a kind of dialogue because the rules in both the Senate and the House of Representatives are very clear. At the end of the day, the party’s role must be seen as a guideline or advisory. It must be seen as advisory, not as something that must and shall be implemented. I believe that what we saw in the House of Representatives was a fallout of that and that is what I will appeal for; that members of the House sit down together among themselves, not with outside forces. I am sure they will resolve all the issues and get down to business. As I said, it is not the best but I am hopeful that everything will be all right. This is just two weeks after the election and that is due to no fault of anybody. There were events that happened which created a lot of controversies here and there. I believe that within a few weeks, these matters would be resolved and those of us in our party will unite. We have no alternative but to unite and I am confident that the Speaker also feels very strongly that we would be fair to all; try and unite with everybody and move on. I just want to appeal to the media and the public to give us some time to do that. If you read some of the publications, you will find that majority of the legislators are not the ones pushing these ‘disunity issues’. They should leave us in the National Assembly. Among ourselves, we will find a solution and we will move forward because at the end of the day, once the ministerial list comes, everybody will leave Senate and be reporting about ministers and appointments. It is we people that have to go and work with ourselves. We should be left to find a course that will enable us to do it. People are asking if we are actually serious but I believe it will come to pass.

In the course of this discussion, you said something about the President, about Asiwaju, but you have not said anything about the party, have you reached out to the national chairman of your party?

Yes, we have had a meeting with the party chairman. A number of times, we tried to find solutions but unfortunately, we have not been able to make much progress and that is the reason I find it very funny when I read in the newspapers that the party chairman is either supporting me or that he has compromised. How has the party chairman helped me? If the party chairman was going to help me, most of you were there when we went to Ibeto Hotel for our retreat as early as May 23 and at that retreat, the chairman was planning to conduct a mock election but the other group did not turn up and the party chairman could not hold the election that time. Nobody should say that the party chairman is trying to help me or is dancing to Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki’s tune. I think that the party has taken some of the decisions based on what they think is their interest. I disagree with the way they have managed some of the issues. It was not to my own advantage in any way.

Some Nigerians are not conversant with a bi-partisan leadership of the legislature as we now have. What is your take on this?

It is not only Nigerians; even we are not familiar with it! It was a circumstance of birth and we have to see it that way. Honestly, I am finding it difficult to phantom how some Senators were not in the chambers that morning. I do not understand how it was planned. As I said, it was because we in the Senate had our own election first. I would have been happier if the House of Representatives had done their election first so that they would carry this burden. But it has happened. The issue now is that it makes my work more difficult but these are the challenges of leadership. I have to step up and ensure that it does not affect what the party must achieve in the Senate. That is my work, it is my responsibility and I believe that the journey should not be concluded immediately. We have just started; let us move on and wait till that time to decide how that is going to affect the work.