· Former vice president unites warring APC leader and senate president at his daughters’ wedding
The day was enshrouded deep in doubt; Bola Tinubu and Bukola Saraki, two storm riders, estranged associates, political foes, in one grand public ceremony, certainly cut a torrid portrait of gossip and intrigues, for the high society rumour mill. But contrary to widespread fears of a possible blowout between them, the All Progressive Congress (APC) leader and senate president respectively, made a public show of sheathing their swords to fraternize at the wedding of the daughters of fellow APC scribe and former vice president, Atiku Abubakar.
Nobody knows if there was a sneer hidden in the smile that they exchanged with each other, at the behest of Atiku Abubakar but everybody knows that the APC leader and senate president for the sake of Atiku Abubakar, swallowed their scorn for each other to exchange pleasantries and idle banter. Atiku got the two men to mingle and relate pleasantly with each other as he gave out three of his daughters in marriage in Yola, Adamawa State recently.
Since President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory at the presidential polls till Friday, November 13, when Atiku handed his three daughters out in wedlock, Tinubu and Saraki nurtured a frosty relationship. Both men ditched the comforting camaraderie they fostered touring the length and breadth of the country while they canvassed for votes for the ruling party, to engage in a wily, no-holds-barred test of political will and might.
Among other things, Saraki’s desperate deployment of chicanery to defy the leadership of the APC in his quest to lead the nation’s senate, pitched him against the former governor of Lagos and President Buhari. Saraki confirmed that there was no love lost between him and Tinubu when a newspaper reported that both men were plotting to work against the government of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Most Nigerians are aware that there has been no meeting or communication between me and Asiwaju Tinubu since I was elected Senate President,” he had said. Likewise, Tinubu never balked from lambasting or taunting Saraki at every opportunity; last month, the APC leader ruled out any form of reconciliation with the two-time senator stating thus: “The manner by which Saraki captured his current seat travestied party discipline. It was a crass act of disloyalty showing that Saraki may have joined the APC on paper but has remained true to the malpractices and wrong aims of the reactionary PDP in his soul,” Tinubu said.
He also taunted Saraki as the latter desperately sought to evade the summons of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). He said: “Government officials are no longer believed by the citizens. When one has a public responsibility, the citizens look at it as if the source of wealth to steal and mismanage public funds and do things not included in the democratic norms and values…It is not what I haven’t personally experienced. I have been through it. Go through it at once and have a nation that we will all be proud of. We have to live by example and by our words. We can be talking about it alone. We have to work it without any iota of blackmail.”
On his part, Saraki maintained that his trial was nothing but “witch-hunt” “I strongly believe that I am here because I am the senate president. I have come here to subject myself before this tribunal not because I am guilty … I am a firm believer of the rule of law,” he had said on his first day at the tribunal.
However, as guests of Atiku, Saraki and Tinubu sat very close to each other and exchanged pleasantries like civil associates. Whether the pleasant exchange between them was indeed real or fashioned for the camera will be known in a couple of days.
