New PDP acquisition, Senate President Bukola Saraki looks set to challenge President Buhari for the Nigerian Presidency come 2019.
This was contained in a report by American business daily, Bloomeberg, who spoke to Saraki, who in turn revealed his Presidential ambition.
“I am consulting and actively considering it,” said the Senate President, “I believe I can make the change.”
The Senate President recently met with former President Olusegun Obasanjo and while he said the meeting was because he was unable to attend the opening of Obasanjo’s library in Ogun state last year, there has been unending speculation that the two actually discussed his defection and the attempted takeover of the Senate by the DSS.
“If a government can go and lock up an arm of government — and it’s never happened in our history — we should all be very concerned,” Saraki said during the Bloomberg interview. “We should not be surprised that they would use security agencies for elections.”
The Senate President believes that Nigerians are no longer behind Buhari and he feels he is the man that can truly effect change in Nigeria.
READ: Oshiomhole, APC Leaders plot Saraki Impeachment
Another powerful Nigerian, however, stands in his way in the form of Atiku Abubakar, and if the former Kwara state Governor has any hope of winning the PDP Presidential ticket on Oct. 5 and 6, he’ll need to defeat the Northerner.
He spoke on the interference of security agencies in Political matters: “There has been a persistent disregard for due process and a lack of neutrality for some of these issues. For you to have credible elections, you must have safe elections. Security agencies are actively getting involved in the politics.”
Saraki added: “The fundamentals of whatever we are going to develop is going to be based on sound democracy, credible elections, freedom of choice of Nigerians. If we don’t have that as a foundation, then everything else cannot happen.”
The Presidential hopeful stated that PDP had learned its lessons from 2015 and is determined to do right by the Nigerian people. He said: “The PDP has learnt its lesson from the loss in 2015, and I think unfortunately the APC did not learn from their victory.”
He said that while negotiating with the PDP about joining them he said: “we listed a number of issues. We talked about how to sustain and improve the fight against corruption; the issue of providing more powers to the states; inclusion and having a more nationalistic approach on things we do; to continue to improve the environment that will ensure investments. We listed a number of items during the discussions with the PDP, and there is a written agreement to that. We trust that we can hold them to that.”