Bukola Saraki, Nigeria’s Senate President said Tuesday that he has been “consulting and actively considering” running for President in 2019.
The Senate president who recently defected from ruling party APC to join opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, revealed this in an interview with Bloomberg held at his Abuja residence.
Asked by the paper if he was running, Saraki said: “I am consulting and actively considering it. I believe I can make the change.”
Saraki also spoke on the siege to the National Assembly by the Department of State Services (DSS), saying: “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.
“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.”
On his return to the PDP, the Senate president said, “The PDP has learnt its lesson from the loss in 2015, and I think unfortunately the APC did not learn from their victory.
“While negotiating with the PDP, we listed a number of issues. We talked about how to sustain and improve the fight against corruption; the issue of providing more powers to the states; inclusion and having a more nationalistic approach on things we do; to continue to improve the environment that will ensure investments. We listed a number of items during the discussions with the PDP, and there is a written agreement to that. We trust that we can hold them to that,” Saraki said.
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