By Hamza Idris & Musa Abdullahi Krishi
Senate
President Bukola Saraki will be investigated over his tenure when a new
Senate is inaugurated in June, ranking senators told Daily Trust on
Sunday yesterday.The senators, who won a return to the upper
legislative chamber in last week’s presidential and National Assembly
elections, said the Senate would be interested in knowing how Saraki
managed its resources and handled national budgets over the four years
he held sway as its president.Saraki became president for the
8th Senate in 2015 through a controversial circumstance that created a
rift between the Federal Government and the All Progressives Congress
(APC)-dominated Red Chamber of the Assembly.The Senate President
subsequently left the ruling APC over the irreconcilable differences
and rejoined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).He, however,
lost his re-election bid, as well as the opportunity to return to the
Senate when he was defeated in the contest for the Kwara Central
senatorial district last week. A ranking senator told Daily Trust on
Sunday yesterday that the outgoing Senate President maybe probed if
infractions were established against him during the four years he
superintended over the Senate.To stop that from happening, the
lawmaker said Saraki would be willing to support a candidate that would
not yield to demands to probe him for the Senate Presidency.“There’s
a possibility of probing him (Saraki) if there are infractions. But we
know he would prefer a person that won’t probe him. So, among the
contenders, it’s possible for Saraki to go for somebody he believes is
close to him.“But the truth of the matter is that if there are
established infractions, we will push for a probe of the Saraki Senate
Presidency, except if we don’t have our way.“We’ll look at
issues related to how budgets were handled and how our internal budget
was spent within his four years,” the senator, who won re-election, told
Daily Trust on Sunday on condition of anonymously.Another
senator, who spoke separately on the planned investigation, said the new
Senate would question Saraki on a number of issues.“This is
obvious; the new leadership would check how he managed the resources of
the National Assembly. It would be an in-house matter because the
Legislature is independent. The Senate would also look at ways to avoid
excesses, such as sabotaging the Executive through withholding or
refusing to act on important bills,” he said.Also, another
lawmaker accused Saraki of working to plant his loyalists in leadership
positions in the Senate and House of Reps, a move he said they had
uncovered and would scuttle.He said Saraki was going that length
to protect his interest and continue to influence things in the country
even when out of power.“We discovered that immediately after
his defeat in the Kwara Central senatorial contest, the Senate President
started working on how to enthrone his stooges as new leaders in the
National Assembly to protect his hegemony,” he said.“He is
already talking with many senators who have secured another mandate …and
this is from both the APC, which has the majority, and the PDP. He
wants them to produce the new Senate President, though he, too, has not
given up on coming back,” he added.He said they were working
hard to see that all those suspected to be working for him did not get
close to any principal office in the National Assembly.No comment – Saraki’s spokesman
When
contacted to react to the likelihood of a probe of the Saraki Senate
Presidency, his special adviser on media and publicity, Yusuph
Olaniyonu, declined comment, saying he did not have answer to the
inquiry.
Source:- Dailytrustng
Leave a Reply