A member of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Ebenezer Babatope, has said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) committed a big blunder by allowing Senate President Bukola Saraki to leave its fold.
Babatope, a former Transportation Minister, made this known in an interview published by Saturday Punch.
According to him, Saraki is a “very strong force” and “sophisticated politican” that no political party should ever allow to leave his fold.
He said:
When the APC was taking our members, we didn’t do anything, and when they felt coming back, they did and we embraced them. For example, say what you like, someone like Saraki is a very strong force; I don’t know why APC allowed him to go. They made a mistake by allowing him to go because he’s a politically powerful person. His father, Dr. Olusola Saraki, was a great man. His father ensured that Senator Cornelius Adebayo became the governor of Kwara State in the second republic, as against the Ibira man who was governor at that time. Bukola is a very strong person politically. When I was still writing a column in a national newspaper, Political Panorama, I warned the APC to be very careful in the way it handles Bukola Saraki. He is a politically sophisticated individual. You must have extra energy given to you by God to be able to withstand his politics. When he was leaving and the APC people were toying with it and even abusing him, we in the PDP are lucky to have him among us. His father was my friend and I know him very well.
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Babatope warned the ruling APC against rigging the 2019 election like it allegedly did in Osun and Ekiti, saying Nigeria might cease to exist if the election is rigged.
He said:
If they (APC) rig the election, eventually, Nigeria will cease to exist because the people’s attitude to that kind of interference would be so bad that the electoral processes that would follow would be such that would get Nigeria out of existence and make a fool of its federalism. At the end, Nigeria would suffer for it and if care is not taken, what we would be seeing is different agitations to challenge the existence of this country.
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