DEFECTION: SARAKI IS POLITICALLY FINISHED – EX-SSG

•Dr. Olusola Saraki
The recent defection of Dr. Olusola Saraki from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State has been described as a reflection of his fast diminishing political relevance. This was the position of a former secretary to Kwara State Government and a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party in the state, Alhaji AbdulRasheed Salmon in an interview in Lagos.

According to him, Dr. Saraki decided to leave the PDP because he had realised that his daughter, Gbemisola, could not win the party's primaries and needed a platform to realise the ambition.

Alhaji Salmon explained that Dr. Saraki's choice of a new party was meant to intimidate the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) so that he could be invited for a meeting where he would tell them to give him automatic ticket as he did in 2003.

The party chieftain urged the leadership of the PDP to call his bluff and not play into his hands because doing so could be suicidal.

Alhaji Salmon said he and some elders of the party had earlier warned the leadership of the PDP that Dr. Saraki would destroy the party and leave when his personal wishes could no longer become a law.

He alleged that by Dr. Saraki's political antecedents, he had not won any electoral battle without the support of state instruments like police and the electoral body.

Alhaji Salmon said the earlier Saraki quit the party, the better, to enable the party do well in the coming polls. The former gubernatorial candidate of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) in the aborted Third Republic also emphasised that from the political antecedents of Dr. Saraki, anytime his personal wishes were not reaslised, he always defected to another party.

He recalled that in the Second Republic when he failed to give the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, gubernatorial ticket to his surrogate, he directed his supporters to vote for the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, even as NPN senate leader, ditto in 2003.