Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the
house of representatives, says former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar “solidly”
backed Bukola Saraki’s bid to be senate president in 2015 — despite strong
opposition from the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC),
apparently including President Muhammadu Buhari.
Dogara himself was not supported
to be speaker by the party hierarchy, but he braved all opposition — including
that from Bola Tinubu, a respected leader of APC — and went on to defeat the
favoured Femi Gbajabiamila in a tight contest.
Ahmed Lawan was the choice of the
APC leadership for senate president.
Atiku, Dogara and Atiku all moved
from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2014 after the then-ruling party was
internally fractured .
In his biography, ‘A Reed Made
Flint’, authored by Ovation publisher, Dele Momodu, Dogara provided more
insight into the politics that ushered in the President Muhammadu Buhari
administration in May 2015.
The biography is due for public presentation on December 26, 2017 to mark the
50th birthday of the speaker.
Dogara told the author: “There
was this particular time we were meeting with our leader in the North-East, His
Excellency Atiku Abubakar at his residence. Our governor (Mohammed Abubakar)
had come into town and some of our stakeholders in APC Bauchi had gone to see
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Somehow, Asiwaju (Bola Tinubu) and one other person
walked into that meeting and he did not waste time in pushing his Gbajabiamila
agenda forward.
“He spoke passionately about the
role he had played in APC, the way he had built bridges between the South-West
and the North and he appealed to my brothers and sisters who were there, all
the political leaders and stake holders of APC from my state to prevail on me
to stop this race and support his candidate Femi Gbajabiamila to become
Speaker. After he had spoken, he left.
“If I don’t say this to Alhaji
Atiku Abubakar’s credit I will not be fair to him. It will amount to travesty.
At the time when most leaders in the APC were not showing sympathy to our
cause, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar came out as one solid voice in support of both the
candidature of the now Senate President (Bukola Saraki) and my humble self.
“He said the North-East must have
a position and it was his duty as a leader from the North-East to support that
goal. And more so, because of the religious demography of Nigeria there was the
need to have a Northern minority Christian in government as that would help to
smoothen religious engagement and relationship in the North and put paid to the
insinuation that APC was just a Muslim party.”
While Dogara started his
speakership on a relatively smooth note, Saraki was charged before the code of
conduct tribunal over allegations of false declaration of assets while he was
governor of Kwara state from 2003-2007.
Atiku recently returned to the
PDP, where he is expected to contest for the presidential ticket ahead of a
potential battle with Buhari in 2019.
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There is nothing shocking here, Atiku had always worked against the interest of the party, Saraki went to Visit Atiku the moment he got his senate president seat. Let's wait and see where Atiku will decamp to once he loses the ticket in 2019.
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