Saraki: Pro-Lawan senators, APC chieftains plotted my abduction on inauguration day

Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, on Saturday revealed how some senators sympathetic to Senator Ahmed Lawan and some chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) plotted his abduction on June 9.
On Tuesday June 9, Saraki was unanimously endorsed as Senate President by all the senators present at the Upper Chamber on APC platform.
Senator Ike Ekweremadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was elected as his deputy.
Lawan was Saraki’s main challenger and was endorsed by the party leadership on June 6 in a mock election in Abuja.
Saraki, who spoke with reporters in Abuja thanked God for saving him from the machinations of his political detractors as they vowed to abduct him so that he would not be present in the Senate that day for the inauguration of the eighth Senate.
Acting on a tip-off, he switched off his phones and went to the National Assembly car park as early as 6am with some trusted aides who ensured his security.
Some of his aides went to the Senate “to monitor events and when they saw that the coast was clear, they signalled him to move to the floor of the Upper Chamber”.
That was a few minutes to 10am.
“So, I stayed in the car park for close to four hours. I never got any message to attend a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the International Conference Centre (ICC) on inauguration day,” Saraki revealed.
“First of all, as regards the meeting (at ICC), on the morning of the inauguration, I didn’t finish at a meeting until 4am of that day and I had got information that efforts would likely be made to make sure that I didn’t get access into the chamber
“So, as early as 4am and 5am, I had made contingency plans that I must get into the National Assembly because the plan before was that senators-elect should go to Transcorp Hilton Hotel around 8am and 9am to proceed to the National Assembly.
“But I was advised that it would not be safe or it would not be secure for me to do that because if some people made sure I didn’t get into the chamber, it would not be possible for me to be nominated, for the nomination to be seconded and for me to accept the nomination.
“I can tell you today that I was in the National Assembly Complex as early as six in the morning and I stayed in a car in the car park till quarter to 10am. That is the truth. I stayed there and I was there with no communication whatsoever.
“So, anybody who said he spoke to me to go to the ICC was not being truthful because I didn’t even know what was going on. All I was monitoring was how people were arriving the complex.
“It was just before 10am that I got information that the Clerk to the National Assembly had entered the chamber. So, I got out of the small car I was inside, stretched myself and put on my Babanriga because I didn’t have it on before then.
“I walked from the car park into the chamber. That was why some of you would have seen that I looked very tired that morning.
“Even when I was in the chamber, I didn’t know what had transpired earlier. The only thing I observed was that it appeared that some of our senators were not in the chamber, but because the fact that my colleagues arrived in batches, I had the opinion that they were on the way and, by 10am, the programme started.
“Before I knew it, my election had come and gone. Even my people were worried; it was only when I got into the chamber that they were relieved.
“In my own view, and, in the view of some of those who worked closely with me, I worked hard for my election. I had direct contact with every single senator, one on one; weeks leading to the election, I did not rely on anybody. I worked hard; both in our party, the APC and out of it.
“I approached every senator, I talked to them, we built confidence, not only in the APC, but, also, in the PDP. I talked to them. That was why I laughed when people said I had a deal with Ekweremadu or I had a hand in the emergence of Ekweremadu.
“I didn’t need any deal to win. I had penetrated, there was no deal. I didn’t need any deal in the first place. I had worked hard such that everybody who was a Senator, I campaigned hard and canvassed for their votes and won their confidence.
“At one of the meetings held at Transcorp Hilton which Senator Godswill Akpabio co-chaired with Senator Ibrahim Gobir and a few others, which had both APC and PDP members, if you heard most of them there, the position they took was that ‘this is the Senate President they want.’
“Across party lines, that day they believed in me and that this is the Senate President that can lead us, there was no deal.
“Sometimes, I wonder how some of our colleagues found themselves at the ICC. If it had been a case that the Clerk of the National Assembly had made an announcement and the event had been postponed or it was no longer holding, plus, the invitation, I’m sure some are asking now, what really happened?
“First of all, the PDP senators had announced to the public that they were supporting me without even meeting me because, in their own meeting, majority had decided to vote for me.
“In their own interest, strategically, they decided that, `look, this is a fait accompli’ because 30 of their own senators were going to vote for this man anyway and the remaining felt it was better to join.
“It wasn’t until 2am that they called us to tell us their decision. With regards to the deputy, when they told us that they had a candidate, we, too, told them we had a candidate for Deputy Senate President in the person of Senator Ali Ndume.
“After our own meeting, it was our thinking that it was after the election of the Senate President that the two groups in APC would meet and we would agree on a candidate. We never in our imagination thought they would not turn up. By the time we got there, we were only 24 while the PDP was more than 40.
“In an election, there’s no way they would not have defeated us and that was what happened? And now, when people say it was a deal, I say that if the Clerk of the National Assembly had started the procedure in the House of Representatives first, and moved to the Senate, thereafter, today, we, the APC, would have had a deputy Senate President.
“It is unfortunate that we have a PDP man as deputy Senate President. It is painful. It is painful for every APC member because when we went through the struggle, that was not what we signed for.
“But it has happened. It is unfortunate and it is not fair to put the blame on one side because it is a combination of errors and miscalculations that led us to have, that morning, some Senators at another place instead of being at the Senate.
“So, to suggest that it was out of a desperate act to emerge, is what I reject completely and those who followed the events would know that I didn’t have that deal to emerge.”