Ex-Minister Traces Rift Between Saraki, Jonathan To Yar’Adua’s Era

The national publicity secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Bolaji Abdullahi, has said the strained relationship between former Senate President Bukola Saraki and ex‑President Goodluck Jonathan began during the presidency of the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

Naija News reports that Abdullahi made the disclosure on Tuesday in Abuja at the public presentation of his new book, The Loyalist, in which he narrated personal insights from his years in public service.

Speaking about his experience, Abdullahi said he lost his ministerial appointment under Jonathan because he refused to join in attacks against Saraki during a political campaign in Kwara State.

In Chapter Nine of the book, he described the early relationship between Saraki and the late Yar’Adua as closer than that between Yar’Adua and then Vice‑President Jonathan.

“It was easy for Jonathan to feel that Saraki and his fellow governors, cavorting with Yar’Adua, looked down on him as that ‘deputy governor’ even though he was now the number two citizen in the country,” Abdullahi wrote.

He added that Yar’Adua, sensing the tension, asked Saraki to meet with Jonathan “to smooth things over,” but suggested that the meeting resulted in civility without genuine candour.

According to Abdullahi, after Yar’Adua’s death and Jonathan’s elevation to the presidency, some in Jonathan’s circle believed Saraki undermined his emergence as acting president.

He said Jonathan’s critics felt that Saraki supported Yar’Adua’s retention of power “even as he lay dying in a Saudi hospital.”

The ADC spokesman, however, countered that this perception was misplaced, noting that it was, in fact, Saraki’s Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) that proposed the Doctrine of Necessity, the legal basis used by the National Assembly to enable Jonathan’s ascension.

“I actually heard about the term ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ for the first time when Governor Saraki called from Abuja asking me to draft a statement to propose it to the National Assembly,” Abdullahi recounted.

Unresolved Suspicions And Political Rift

Despite Saraki’s role in Jonathan’s rise, Abdullahi said the president remained sceptical of Saraki’s intentions, particularly after comments by Vincent Ogbulafor, then national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), that the presidency would remain in the North in 2011.

He said Saraki had engaged in a northern consensus arrangement that would have positioned a northern candidate against Jonathan in the PDP primaries.

Even though Saraki later lost the consensus and was reported to have thrown support behind Jonathan, Abdullahi said the president remained unconvinced of Saraki’s loyalty.

Abdullahi described the fuel subsidy crisis of early 2012 as a turning point.

He said the Jonathan presidency believed Saraki’s October 2011 Senate motion calling for a probe into fuel subsidy payments helped spark the crisis, leading to widespread protests and inflicting political damage on the government.

“The subsidy removal and the protests that followed shook the Jonathan government to its very foundations,” he said.

Abdullahi added that the crisis was widely seen as “the single most significant event that contributed to Jonathan’s unprecedented defeat in the 2015 general elections.”

Despite the tensions, Abdullahi said Saraki and Jonathan met again later, after the crisis had subsided, at a time when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had begun probing Saraki and his family.

According to Abdullahi, Saraki challenged Jonathan about the use of the EFCC against him, questioning why he was being subjected to what he saw as harassment if the president truly sought cordial relations.

“Jonathan denied involvement and promised to investigate,” Abdullahi said, describing the encounter as an attempt at reconciliation.