Bolaji Abdullahi, national publicity secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), says the strained relationship between Bukola Saraki, former senate president, and Goodluck Jonathan, former president, began during the administration of the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
Abdullahi spoke on Tuesday in Abuja during the public presentation of his new book, The Loyalist.
He said Jonathan removed him as a minister because he refused to abuse Saraki during a campaign in Kwara.
In chapter nine of the book, Abdullahi recalled that Saraki, then chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), enjoyed close access to Yar’Adua while Jonathan, who was vice-president, was largely sidelined.
He said it was “easy for Jonathan to feel that Saraki and his fellow governors, cavorting with Yar’Adua, looked down on him as that ‘deputy governor’ even though he was now the number two citizen in the country”.
Abdullahi stated that Yar’Adua noticed Jonathan’s discomfort and asked Saraki to meet him to “smooth things over”.
He also noted that Saraki agreed, but “civility tends to override candour, and everything was generally papered over”.
According to Abdullahi, after Yar’Adua’s death and Jonathan’s rise to power, there was a belief within Jonathan’s circle that Saraki helped frustrate his emergence as acting president.
He said Jonathan’s allies believed Saraki supported Yar’Adua’s retention of power “even as he lay dying in a Saudi hospital”.
Abdullahi, however, described the perception as misplaced, noting that Saraki’s NGF proposed the “Doctrine of Necessity” adopted by the national assembly to enable Jonathan’s ascension.
“I actually heard about the term ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ for the first time when Governor Saraki called from Abuja asking me to draft a statement to propose it to the National Assembly,” he said.
He said Jonathan still appeared convinced that Saraki intended to undermine him after he was sworn in.
Abdullahi linked the suspicion to a statement by Vincent Ogbulafor, then national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), that the presidency would remain in the north in 2011.
He said Saraki joined a northern consensus effort that could have produced a challenger against Jonathan at the party primaries.
Abdullahi said although Saraki later lost out to Atiku Abubakar in the process and reportedly backed Jonathan, it “did nothing to assure the president of Saraki’s good intentions towards him”.
He said tensions worsened during the fuel subsidy crisis of early 2012.
According to him, the Jonathan presidency believed Saraki instigated the crisis through his October 2011 senate motion seeking a probe into subsidy payments.
He said the subsidy removal and protests that followed “shook the Jonathan government to its very foundations”.
Abdullahi said the crisis was widely regarded as “the single most significant event that contributed to Jonathan’s unprecedented defeat in the 2015 general elections”.
He said Saraki and Jonathan later met after the crisis, when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had begun investigating Saraki and his family.
According to Abdullahi, Saraki asked Jonathan why the EFCC was being used to harass him if the president wanted a cordial relationship.
He said Jonathan denied involvement, promised to investigate, and described the meeting as an attempt at reconciliation.
