Bukola Saraki,has opened up on the drama that culminated in his election as the has Senate President and how he scuttled plans to prevent his election by all means.
According to Saraki, he had a privileged information that efforts would be made to to prevent his access to the chambers of the National Assembly until the whole process of nomination, acceptance and election of the senate president was done with.
The senate president, whose election has unsettled the All Progressives Congress leadership who had another as their preferred candidate, said he had to find his way into the national assembly premises ,where he hid himself in the car park for four hours before the arrival of his colleagues on the day of inauguration.
Saraki made these revelations when he spoke with journalists in Abuja on Saturday.
He said, “First of all, as regards the meeting (at ICC), on the morning of the inauguration, I didn’t finish meeting until 4:00 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 chambers.
“So, as early as 4:00am and 5:00am, I had made contingency plans that I must get into the National Assembly because the plan before was that Senators-elect should go to the Transcorp Hilton Hotel around 8:00clock and 9:00am to proceed to the National Assembly.
“But I was advised that it would not be safe or secure for me to do that because some people made sure…if I didn’t get into the chambers, it wouldn’ t be possible for me to be nominated, for the nomination to be seconded and for me and to accept the nomination.
“I can tell you today that I was in the National Assembly Complex as early as 6:00 in the morning and I stayed in a car in the Car Park, from 6:00 in the morning till quarter to 10:00am. This is the truth. I stayed there and I was there with no communication whatsoever.”
The Senate president dismissed as incorrect reports that he was told about the meeting of APC senator’s’s alleged meeting with the party’s leadership.
He said further, “So, anybody who said they spoke to me to go the ICC was not true because I didn’t even know what was going on. All I was monitoring was how people were arriving the Complex.
“It was at quarter to 10:00 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 Babariga because I didn’t have it on before then.
“I walked from the Car Park into the chambers…That was why some of you would have seen that I looked very tired on that morning.
“Even when I was in the chambers, I didn’t know what had transpired earlier on. The only thing I observed was that, it appeared that some of our Senators were not in the chamber but the fact that my colleagues arrived in batches, I had the opinion that they were on the way and by 10:00am, 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 chambers that they were relieved.”
On the election of Ike Ekweremadu of the PDP as the Deputy Senate President, he would agree there was any form of deal with PDP senators.
He said that the election Ekweremadu was due principally to the absence of majority of APC senators in the chambers.
