Saraki Replies APC Leader, Speaker Dogara Fires Too

The Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, and the Speaker of the House of Reps, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, on Monday described as baseless a statement by the former All Progressives Congress National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, that their elections on June 9 were sponsored by oil barons.

Saraki and Dogara gave their reaction in separate statements in Abuja on Monday.

Akande, in a widely publicised statement on Sunday, had alleged that oil barons who never liked President Muhammadu Buhari`s anti-corruption stance, sponsored the elections of Saraki and Dogara in a bid to stifle the new government.

Akande also alleged that some splinter groups within the APC were aligning with old and new PDP forces to launch a platform for the 2019 polls.

Dogara, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Turaki Hassan, challenged Akande to name the oil barons.

The speaker said he expected Akande, an elder statesman, to play his fatherly role at a period of disputes within the APC’s family by seeking ways to reconcile the factions, rather than attacking his person.

Dogara said that the allegations existed only in Akande’s “imagination”, adding that he won his election based on the support of his colleagues, his competence and capacity to preside over the House as the Speaker.

The speaker recalled that the first investigative motion passed by the House after his election was to probe the alleged crude oil swap contracts awarded by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

He noted that it did not make sense for him to back the probe of the same oil sector’s stakeholders Akande alleged to have sponsored his election.

Also, the Special Assistant to the Senate President on Print Media, Chuks Okocha, described the allegations as mischievous and totally false.

Okocha, in a statement in Abuja on Monday, said Akande’s claim gave a negative and dirty impression that the emergence of the senate president was aimed at sabotaging the anti-corruption posture of Buhari’s government and the ‘Change agenda’ of the APC.

He said, “Ordinarily, we would have ignored the report, but for the sole reason that some undiscerning readers might mistake the fiction for the facts.

“We also wish to state unequivocally that it was wrong and mischievous for the statement by Chief Akande to link what happened on the floor of both chambers to some unnamed oil barons.

“We dare say that the entire story was the figment of the imagination of the author.”