APC crisis: Obasanjo’s peace mission hits brick wall
Efforts by the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, to nip in
the bud the crisis set off by the recent election of the principal
officers of the National Assembly may have hit a brick wall.
The crisis of confidence which has pitted party leaders of the All
Progressives Congress against the new principal officers of the
National Assembly may take a turn for the worse this week.
Contrary to the belief in several quarters, President
Muhammadu Buhari, who is widely believed to have accepted
the election of the principal officers as a fait accompli , is said to
be unhappy with the leadership of the National Assembly.
Sources close to the two camps told our correspondents that
President Buhari and senior party officials were still peeved that
Saraki and other party members defied the party and formed an
alliance with the former ruling party, the Peoples Democratic
Party.
The APC senators loyal to Saraki had on June 9 boycotted a
peace meeting convened by Buhari and the leadership of the
party. The meeting, which was attended by senators loyal to
Senator Ahmad Lawan, the APC’s official candidate for the
position of the Senate President, was going on when Saraki,
with the support of his loyalists in the APC and all the PDP
senators, emerged as the senate president unopposed.
Since then, the party has been in crisis, even though the APC
had said it would work with Saraki.
During the week, Saraki, paid a well publicised visit to former
President Olusegun Obasanjo. His aim, reports say, was to seek
the former president’s intervention in the crisis. Saraki wanted
Obasanjo to pacify the APC leaders on his behalf. But Sunday
PUNCH gathered that the former president’s intervention has
failed to yield the results desired by Saraki and his camp.
It was gathered that shortly after Saraki’s visit to the former
president, Obasanjo made a telephone call to Buhari advising
him to make up with Saraki. The former president had reportedly
told the president to work with Saraki and let the party deal with
all the disciplinary issues that the former governor of Kwara
State had been accused of. However, the President was said to
have been non-committal.
Sources privy to these happenings told our correspondents that
the telephone call initiated by Obasanjo was not the first time
the former president would intervene in the matter. Sunday
PUNCH reliably gathered that Obasanjo had met with Buhari in
South Africa, last Sunday, and sought his help in resolving the
crisis in the ruling party. Sources said that the former president,
who was in Zambia for the 22nd annual general meeting of the
African Export-Import Bank, had travelled from there to South
Africa to meet with President Buhari.
Speaking over the weekend, some senior party leaders
expressed doubts about the viability of Obasanjo’s intervention.
They told SUNDAY PUNCH in different interviews that Saraki is
an ally of former vice-president Atiku Abubakar whom Obasanjo
is not very fond of.
One of them said, “It is not a secret that Atiku is solidly behind
Saraki. How the senate president thinks Obasanjo will back any
move by Atiku is what we don’t understand. Atiku was the first
person that Saraki visited when he emerged as senate president.
The ex-president will definitely not turn Saraki back but deep in
his heart, he knows which camp he belongs to.”
But a source in the corridors of power told our correspondent on
the condition of anonymity that the President’s response to
pleas for his intervention had remained the same.
Sources said while Buhari was careful not to make his
disappointment with Saraki public, he was very angry that the
senate president led a rebellion against his party and also
teamed up with the PDP to undermine it. One other reason the
crisis has remained intractable, the source added, was the
emergence of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate
President.
“The President believes that Saraki earned the support of the
PDP because of the deputy senate presidency he conceded to
the opposition party. It is a treacherous thing to do to one’s
party,” the source said.
Buhari had reportedly shunned all moves by Saraki to meet him
before the senate president’s visit to Obasanjo.
However, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media
and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, said Buhari was not
avoiding Saraki. Rather, he said, it was the Senate President
who is yet to visit the presidency. When asked specifically when
Saraki would be meeting with the President, Shehu said it was
left for the President of the Senate to decide.
“There is no truth in the claims that the President does not want
to meet with any of the National Assembly leaders. He has said
that he respects institutions and that strong men build
institutions,” Garba said.
Our correspondents report that Saraki may be reluctant to make
an approach because he doesn’t want to be rebuffed. A
prominent member of the Like Minds Senators, a group
sympathetic to the senate president, confirmed that Saraki had
not fixed an appointment with Buhari after meeting Obasanjo.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said, “After the meeting
with Obasanjo, there has been no specific move on the part of
the senate president to meet with Mr. President. They will meet
at the appropriate time.”
A senior APC official, who confided in SUNDAY PUNCH , said,
“From all indications, all sides in the crisis are maintaining their
hard-line positions on the crisis. It seems Saraki is not ready for
reconciliation. His group is insisting on its position. The Lawan
group has given its conditions for peace and the President
believes that there must be party discipline.”
Meanwhile, in a clear sign that the president may not have a
problem with the leadership of the House, Buhari will be
granting audience to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, this week.
The meeting, one of our correspondents learnt, is at the
instance of Dogara.
Shehu, confirmed Buhari’s meeting with Dogara. He however
declined to give details of the specific day on which the meeting
would hold.
“I have just gone through the President’s activities for the week
and I saw that Dogara is scheduled to meet with him (the
President) during the week,” Shehu said.
On his part, the spokesperson for the pro- Saraki group, Senator
Dino Melaye, said the senate president had appeared before the
party’s reconciliation committee.
He said, “The party set up a reconciliation committee with the
APC General Secretary as Chairman and Saraki had appeared
before the committee.”
http://www.punchng.com/news/apc-crisis-obasanjos-peace-mission-hits-brick-wall/

I simlpy don't believe the story. Such weighty matters are not discussed on phone. Our big men are not fools. If you doubt me, is the Clueless man's telephone call to PMB not in the public domain now?

Interesting

amnesty7:
I simlpy don't believe the story. Such weighty matters are not discussed on phone. Our big men are not fools. If you doubt me, is the Clueless man's telephone call to PMB not in the public domain now?

Is quite possible for Obasanjo to make calls to Buhari. There is nothing absolutely impossible.