2019 Presidency: Saraki can’t preside over Nigeria – APC

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has stated that the President of the Senate, Dr Bokola Saraki has issues of integrity and cannot preside over the affairs of the country.

The party made this known in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja while welcoming Saraki to the 2019 presidential race.

The statement, however, added that Saraki’s presidential aspiration was a huge joke and should not be taken seriously, adding that he had repeatedly displayed his character as extremely selfish, deceitful, untrustworthy and unreliable.

“Nigerians have had enough of Dr. Bukola Saraki’s retrogressive and disruptive style of politics and deserve no more.

“While the APC welcomes him to the race as it is his right to do so as a Nigerian citizen, there are however, many issues that border on his integrity, antecedents, competence and capability to preside over the affairs of the country.

“Meanwhile we are not unaware of reports that Saraki’s presidential declaration is his tactic to deflect attention from the deluge of issues he deals with particularly ahead of the 2019 general elections”, he said.

This, the APC spokesman said, was particularly with regard to pressure to reconvene the National Assembly, and the shifting of political order in Kwara, his home state, among others.

He added that by virtue of Saraki’s antecedents, he is an abysmal failure and totally incompetent to offer himself as a candidate for the country’s leadership indicating that, “as a two-term Governor of Kwara and President of the Senate in the last three years, Saraki’s performance was not good enough.

“Saraki’s Shonga agricultural program when he was Kwara State Governor was a white elephant project in which hundreds of millions of the state funds was sunk into.

“The infrastructure, particularly roads network in the State in which the present administration remains under his tight grip and a political machination long after leaving office, remains deplorable while state resources is mismanaged through corrupt enrichment.

“A presidential aspirant who promises to create jobs and turn around the economy at the national level, must have done so in a state he served as Governor for eight years”, he said.

The statement challenged Saraki to give the nation his scorecard as a Kwara State Governor adding that the President of the Senate, Saraki used his position to superintend over budget padding, sabotage of the Executive by frustrating confirmation of presidential nominees, stalling Legislature approvals for election budgets.

This, he said, were among other treacherous actions against the APC in pursuit of his selfish political interests.

“Saraki’s journey as President of the Senate was a show of shame from one court or tribunal to another over charges of forgery of Senate rules, false declaration of assets,

and being linked with armed robbers and could not be representing Nigerian youths as he claimed, especially as the ‘Not Too Young To Run’ group berated him for selfishly using their forum to make his presidential declaration.

“We are not surprised by his selfish actions as it has come to define his politics and persona as his only goal is to get to the top, stay at the top, ruin or wreck whatever he finds there or in the event of failure, collapse the system”.