‘Saraki’s Rumoured Presidential Bid Orchestrated to Complicate Oyegun’s Matter’

Anayo Okolie

The swirling rumoured presidential bid of Senate President Bukola Saraki is a planned work of opposition within the All Progressives Congress (APC) to complicate the current plight of the party’s National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun over his lingering tenure elongation controversy.

A senior national officer of the APC, who spoke in confidence with THISDAY, said the alleged presidential bid of the Senate President is part of a grand plan to unsettle the party by setting some actors against one another ahead of the 2019 general election.

According to the APC source, any grounded party member knows where the stories are coming from, noting that the resolve to sell Saraki’s presidential bid is the first of a series of fresh onslaught to knock down certain elements in the APC as well as make more enemies for the president.

“Their belief and thinking is that the proposed tenure elongation for the national chairman was an idea to have Oyegun back Saraki if and when he decides to run for the presidency. How they came about that calculation is beyond what anyone can imagine now, because it is not just far from reality but more complicated than they make it seem.

“The decision to extend Oyegun’s tenure was conceived to save the president himself and if he refuses to see the wisdom in it, why start an impossible war with people, who clearly have nothing to do with it? Don’t forget that the proposed elongation is an idea that generated from governors and the state chairmen, including Lagos. Are you saying those ones too are working for Saraki?

“Sometimes when our people set out to fight, the urge to do evil becomes too exciting that they are unable to properly analyse and situate the issues in context. There is no doubting the fact that they don’t want Oyegun and would rather someone else from the same state as Oyegun. That is their problem.

“But don’t start selling lies because you want to look good. Don’t demonise others because of your own inordinate ambition. Don’t’ please. Saraki has not told anyone he would run, not anyone of us in the APC. Check your facts. It doesn’t mean he would not run eventually if there is that opening. But why sell falsehood?”

The source further maintained that, “I think they are overrating themselves and their platform. If Saraki would eventually contest in the presidential race, I don’t think it would even be on our platform, because everything they are scheming to do now is destroy the party.

“What is therefore so important about this platform that he would seek election on it again? They don’t even know what is obtainable anymore. A lot of these people have been overrated as strategist but clearly, they lack basic understanding of good strategy,” he said.

He, however, maintained that the fear being nursed against the proposed extension of Oyegun’s tenure could be located in the struggle to seize the soul of the APC, adding that “those teaching Buhari to moralise a clearly political situation are those who would mock him when the results are eventually delivered.”