FIXING NIGERIA: THE SARAKI EDGE, BY Tunde Bakare
The season is back again. Four full years have run out so fast. The revolutionaries we met and heard about four years ago are metamophorsing into reactionaries today. It is all part of the shrewd political knowhow (gimmicks, if you like) that we have always heard and spoken about.
The whole nation is in a mellow mood as we make welcome to ‘the season of intrigues’ (or deceit, if you are less charitable).
For us in Kwara, the nation’s state of harmony, we rejoice. We do so for ourselves and for the nation as a whole. We join the rest of Nigeria in bidding bye to the circle of intrigues and crass incompetence. We do so by offering one of us, our former governor and former Nigeria Senate President in whom we are well pleased, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, to run the affairs of this nation for the next four years. The nation can thereafter be left with the choice as to either renewing his mandate after the first four years or not.
But, first things first: we are proposing a proposition. This is it:
Tomorrow, when the PDP presidential primary holds in Abuja, let all delegates be persuaded to vote Saraki; let them elect to raise the standard of leadership in Nigeria and Africa by voting Saraki. That, dear reader, is the crux of our proposal.
If we are truthful about giving this nation a new lease of life, that is the start point.
Why do I say so? It is enough to ask this question to know the answer. Without prejudice to Saraki’s co contestants in the presidential race, the man, Abubakar Bukola Saraki has the most awe-inspiring track record in politics and governance among his peers. The proof of this stares us all in the face. The nation as a whole can bear Kwara witness that Saraki has developed real solutions to challenges he met at virtually all the duty posts he has found himself both in private and in the public spaces.
Except those attempting to twist the truth, nobody is in doubt that Saraki is the bridge the nation needs to obliterate the widening gap between all shades of persuasions in our nation today. The Saraki edge is simple to discern. They are age, vigor, experience and pedigree.
His unbridled appeal can be benchmarked against the significant
impact he made as the nation’s Senate President. He came on the job with clear, purposeful and visionary agenda for the nation and held on to the job till the end with unbroken focus.
Away from the futile sensational lies and falsehood peddled to corrode Saraki’s reputation, the records are there. They are clear indicators of the abilities of a team-player; an educated man who, in spite of his education, knows that an educated person is not necessarily the one who has all the knowledge, but the one who knows where to get it when needed.
Indeed, that is yet another Saraki edge. He has an array of friends, nationally and internationally. Friends of various colour and creed. Friends in whom he has invested and deposited idea, ideals, opinions, finances and favours. True friends who are ever ready to reciprocate his kind gestures.
That is exactly what Nigeria needs now in the areas of security, economy, and very importantly, education.
Profoundly patriotic, Saraki’s agenda to get the nation off the woods are set. Just as he came on the job at the senate with a set agenda. Our headaches need not became migraine on the alter of sentiments and concocted lies peddled ignorantly or deliberately.
Not when we have Abubakar Bukola Saraki on our hands.
He is here to the rescue. He has promised to fix Nigeria. He has the blueprint. He has promised to build bridges across religions, age and ethnic divides. He has ingenious ideas on how to obliterate talks about north and south dichotomy. What’s more, he is not in denial that our standard of living is in dire need of improvements. He says he will fix that too. And he can. We have proof that these are no empty promises.
Why sell ourselves short? Why chose to be complacent in the destruction of the conscience of the nation? Why not take the word to the streets as we all are doing in
Kwara that Saraki has come. He is the man to fix Nigeria.
Lets join hands to positively and purposefully push this agenda. I stand with Saraki. Standing elsewhere is dealing the nation a rude undercut. Why do that to us?
Tunde Bakare writes from Idi-Orombo, Ile Lalemi,
Offa, Kwara State.