These may not be the best of times for the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, as investigations by the Saturday Telegraph revealed that the Federal Government (FG) has concluded plans on a three-prong strategy to tame what is perceived as his growing political influence.
This is coming as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) confirmed that the FG and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are shopping court orders to remove Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu.
Checks by our correspondents showed that the Presidency has prepared a “perfect and solid arrangement” to nail Saraki who last week defected from the APC to the PDP with all elected officials and political appointees in Kwara State, making him the most prominent politician in the opposition.
The plans, according to credible security sources, will begin to manifest from next week, as sources familiar with the development confided in our reporters that a move that would shake the man in the eye of the storm had been perfected.
What is considered the most potent of the strategies is a “solid link” that had just been found allegedly between the Senate President and the Offa robbery suspects where during a daring operation, armed robbers killed 30 people, including nine policemen on April 5, 2018.
To achieve this, it was learnt that a Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) was detailed to take over the aspect of the investigation, which allegedly linked Saraki with some of the suspects.
The DIG was said to have unraveled the ‘fresh evidence’ that would make inviting Saraki more compelling, unlike previous reports that were considered not strong enough for his arrest and possible detention.
The current link between Saraki and the robbery suspects, which the prosecutors find not strong enough, is the confession of one of the suspects, Ayodele Akinnibosun, who claimed to be a political thug for Saraki and the state governor, Abdulfattah Ahmed.
He had said: “I am the chairman of Liberation Youths movement Kwara South. I work for Senate president and Governor Ahmed as political mobilising youth and we have been working for long time since he was governor of Kwara.
We mobilise and do political arrangement for him in Kwara South. Where we can’t win, we make arrangement there; we scatter elections if we don’t win.”
Although the Senate President has consistently denied any involvement in the crime, the police was said to have worked on the “fresh and more convincing evidence” after the said DIG relocated to Ilorin last week to assemble the fresh evidence, preparatory to being used against Saraki.
The second of the threeprong strategy is to unleash a team of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on the state, to begin another round of examination of the state’s financial records from 2003 to date.
This, an insider confirmed, is already happening, noting that some operatives of the anti-graft agencies are already on ground in the state.
This effort is expected to yield enough material to secure convictions against Saraki and make Ahmed an accomplice so as to keep both of them imbalanced until after the election.
“Are you sure the EFCC guys are not already on ground in that state? We expect them to be there fully by now”, one of the sources said.
But efforts to get the EFCC and the police to either confirm or deny the plans were not successful, as the telephone lines of the EFCC’s Head of Media and Publicity, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, and that the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, were switched-off at the time of filing this report.
The third option according to the highly placed sources, is to create more confusion in the National Assembly where there are ongoing moves already to impeach Saraki and Ekeremandu.
An opposition lawmaker told Saturday Telegraph that the anti- Saraki senators would be more empowered to create a state of instability in the National Assembly worse than what Saraki has experienced so far.
This was subtly confirmed by Senator Abdullahi Adamu, who said Saraki would face drastic consequences.
