The President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, on Saturday dismissed insinuations that for him to win, he had to enter into a pact with the People’s Democratic Party to emerge as the senate president while insisting that it was the absence of APC senators in the chamber that ensured the emergence of Ekweremadu as his deputy.
He also revealed how he hid in the National Assembly car park for four hours on the day of the inauguration of the National Assembly to emerge as Senate president.
This was just as Saraki blamed the absence of the senators elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress for the emergence of Senator Ike EKweremadu (PDP-Enugu West) as Deputy President of the Senate.
Saraki, who spoke with newsmen in Abuja, disclosed that there were plans to abduct him in order to make him unavailable to stand for the election.
He said: “First of all, as regards the meeting (of the senators elected on the platform of the APC with President Muhammadu Buhari at the International Conference Centre, Abuja) on the morning of the inauguration, I didn’t finish meeting until 4am of that day and I had got information that efforts would likely be made to make sure that I didn’t get access into the chambers.
“So, as early as 4am and 5am, I had made contingency plans that I must get into the National Assembly because the plan before was that senators-elect should go to the Transcorp Hilton Hotel around 8am and 9am to proceed to the National Assembly.
“But I was advised that it would not be safe or secure for me to do that because some people made sure…if I didn’t get into the chambers, it would not be possible for me to be nominated, for the nomination to be seconded and for me to accept the nomination.
“I can tell you today that I was in the National Assembly Complex as early as six in the morning and I stayed in a car in the car park from six in the morning till quarter to 10am.
“This is the truth. I stayed there and I was there with no communication whatsoever. So anybody who said they spoke to me to go the ICC was not true because I didn’t even know what was going on.
“All I was monitoring was how people were arriving the Complex. It was at quarter to 10 I got information that the Clerk to the National Assembly had entered the chamber.
“So, I got out of the small car I was inside, stretched myself and put on my Babariga because I didn’t have it on before then. I walked from the car park into the chambers.
“That was why some of you would have seen that I looked very tired on that morning. Even when I was in the chambers, I didn’t know what had transpired earlier on.
“The only thing I observed was that it appeared that some of our senators were not in the chamber but the fact that my colleagues arrived in batches, I had the opinion that they were on the way and by 10am, the programme started.
“Before I knew it, my election had come and gone. Even my people were worried. It was only when I got into the chambers that they were relieved.”
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