Senate President Bukola Saraki is stepping up to the big challenge for
2019, indicating he’s interested in running for President.
He told the news agency: “I am consulting and actively considering it. I believe I can make the change.”
He also revealed the deal he struck with the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP) prior to his defection from the All Progressives Congess (APC),
according to Bloomberg.
The Senate president said: “If a
government can go and lock up an arm of government — and it’s never
happened in our history — we should all be very concerned, we should not
be surprised that they would use security agencies for elections.”
To
win the PDP ticket at the party’s primary on Oct. 5 and 6, Saraki would
need to beat other presidential aspirants, including former Vice
President Atiku Abubakar, former Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido,
former Kaduna State Governor Ahmed Makarfi, former Minister Tanimu
Turaki, Gombe State Governor Ibrahim Dankwabo and Sokoto State Governor
Aminu Tambuwal.
Saraki said Nigeria needed to be governed by a
genuinely pro-business administration that will be able to tackle
recurrent security issues.
He said: “Most of the inflows that
have come in are merely hot money, and that is because the oil price has
gone up. Investment in the real sector is not seen.
“The private sector, in my view, has probably taken a position that the confidence is not there in the government.
“The country requires a government that is truly pro-business and a president that sees himself as a chief marketing officer.
”There
has been a persistent disregard for due process and a lack of
neutrality for some of these issues. For you to have credible elections,
you must have safe elections. Security agencies are actively getting
involved in the politics.
“The fundamentals of whatever we are
going to develop is going to be based on sound democracy, credible
elections, freedom of choice of Nigerians. If we don’t have that as a
foundation, then everything else cannot happen.”
“If we are going
to have a subsidy, we should have a budget for it. Because once we have
a budget for it, the private sector can also play a role in the
importation of petroleum products. And if the private sector plays a
role, definitely the cost of the subsidy will go down and there will be
more efficiency in the delivery of products. But in the environment we
are in today, where it’s only the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.
that’s doing that, it’s going to be inefficient, it’s not going to be
transparent.”
