Why I want to be Senate President- Saraki

Senator Bukola Saraki recently held an interactive session with the Senate press corps on the lingering issue of the leadership of the 8th National Assembly. The former governor of Kwara state, who is a front-runner for the Senate presidency, says legislators must be allowed to elect their leadership in line with the spirit of change. He also said that the All Progressives Congress, APC, is at the risk of losing elections in 2019 if it fails to deliver on its promises to the people. EMMA OKEREH was there for Hallmark. Excerpts:

Will you tell us why you want to be the Senate President given that the North Central had its eight years under David Mark and you are from North Central?
I think the most important agenda before us is our country, Nigeria. A lot of us have in the last few years raised the alarms and raised a lot of observation and decrying the direction the country was going. We have been raising this alarm now for like three and a half years and where it was clear to some of us that we needed to change direction, and the way the economy was going, the way the revenues were going down, the accountability of the government, the transparency of the government. In fact, if it continues like that, the country will be in a situation where it would not be able to meet its obligations.

 
Since 2011, I have been stressing the need for us to review and start doing the right thing continually, and I think this is just a continuation of where we are, where we started two years ago, that we need to get this country in the right direction. So when you talk about what we will be able to contribute, it is to be able to see at the legislative arm of government, if we can begin to have an impact on how the country will improve. I think one of the major concerns by the Nigerian people is that they don’t feel the impact of those of us in the National Assembly, whether you are in the House of Representatives or the Senate, that’s why people will ask questions concerning our functions. We have to reconnect with the Nigerian people, reconnect in the sense that how the National Assembly, people of Nigeria will begin to see and value what we are doing.

 
When we will begin to have a national agenda that will address the major issues today whether we like it or not is likely to do with infrastructure, it has to do with accountability and transparency. Look at the area of the fuel issue today, we have an obligation that they claim that government cannot reach…then we have the kind of crisis. We have state and some local and federal government agencies that cannot even meet salaries not to talk about ongoing capital project that cannot be completed, these are major issues and I think that the 8th National Assembly has to address those areas we talked about, whether oversight functions, either the passing of laws… We must connect and Nigerians should be able to say yes, this is why we elected and I think that this is going to be a departure. I think that is really important to people like myself to see that we begin to play that role that Nigerians will begin to understand why we have a National Assembly.

 
My view has always been, and if you go and look at my statement, I said the major issue that has crippled us is low crude oil price. Other countries too that are producing oil are not going through what we are going through because we only have a hundred dollar crude oil barrel, and they use it effectively because it is clear that a day like this was going to come. So I think that if we are talking of leadership whether in the executive or legislature, we must have people that have a grasps of understanding of what is required, it’s not that I am just going there to be in a position, look at what value the person is bringing to the table and I believe that in the other area of oversight, I believe that we can do better. Some of these things we can improve on, I know that the Senate in the past has played a role in bringing stability during major crisis.

 
Beyond that, apart from stabilizing crisis, the Senate should have a national agenda alone because I think that there must be law that transcend both side of the party whether you are APC or PDP. Whether you are addressing unemployment, I don’t think we have any differences… I cannot understand how till today, the NNPC can continue to say that there are certain funds that they need for recovery; these are the major policy issues.

Are you not worried that the leadership of your party has not been able to put its feet down on the issue of zoning of the National Assembly leadership?

 
I think what Nigerians voted for in voting for the APC was change and we are trying to do things in a different way, in trying to allow people to express their desire. I think the change has been a departure from what we have seen from the other political party and this is what we can look at from the time of our presidential primaries, what made the party popular was what Nigerians saw in our presidential primaries in line with the right to make our choice in a transparent way and I think that it is the same process where the President has spoken…and a lot of people have spoken at the end of the day. It is the National Assembly that should be able to pick who they want as regards to who leads them and to allow due process and internal democracy.

 
Where you begin to see problem is when you see injustice, when 16 is greater than 19, but once you allow due process there will not be problems. I think that between the APC Senators there can be internal democracy or between the 109 Senators too, there can be a process, the processes are there, the rules are there. The key thing there in our country and it is for us to begin to move away from those things that we see before as wrong and those are the problems of democracy.

 
Why are we here today? Because Nigerians got tired and said we are going to vote out a sitting government that is the chance we have now. Before, every politician can say as soon as I get to that seat, nobody can vote me out, I remember when we started this thing people will say ‘Oga’ it’s not possible, you don’t have police, you don’t have SSS, you don’t have army how can you win? I believe that this government has not performed and because of this I am going to go and vote for APC.

 
Again in 2019, if we the APC do the same thing, the same Nigerians will vote us out, so it is important now that we do the right thing and that is why I am advising that it can never be business as usual in this country again. Any serious minded politician now know that we don’t deliver, Nigerians will vote us out, they have the capacity do it and that capacity will continue to get bigger. So for us in doing the right thing we must look at the capacity of individuals and leave all these sentiments that are being used, these are the old ways of which we used to do things.
I am more hopeful for the fact that there are more new lawmakers coming because the 8th Senate is likely going to be in some areas, a departure from the past and I think it’s always easier when you are coming fresh, you will come with new ideas and I think there are some new ideas we need to really incorporate. So I don’t think it is a disadvantage.

 
The last days of President Goodluck Jonathan, we have to give him credit for taking a very difficult decision which is to have conceded defeat and congratulated Buhari because I am sure that majority of the hawks didn’t like it. I am sure sometimes he might have quiet moment now and ask why it is like that… maybe I shouldn’t have done that but I think he took the right decision. We saw what happened in Ivory Coast, so from that point of view I think that he is going to be in for a lot of surprises. I think one of the problem as some of us told him was that a lot of people that he trusted in positions abused the office.

 
You might be a nice guy, you might be a very friendly guy, you might be but like I said running government is like running companies. You are going to be able to look at the person and know whether this person has the capacity to do it? And when you don’t have it this is where we or the company will find itself. I could remember when some of us left the party, some people will convince him to make a statement that it was good riddance to bad rubbish and if you look at it, there is no way the PDP would have gone down this way if he has kept all his people on board. So that is just an example of where bad advice led to his fall.