A former governor of Sokoto State and one of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential aspirants, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa, has said that the embattled Senate President Bukola Saraki, cannot resigned his position, as this would contradict a precedent in the nation’s democratic history.
Bafarawa stated this in Abuja on Thursday, when he met some newsmen as part of his campaign strategies to win the PDP Presidential ticket for 2019 election.
He said his agenda if he emerged Nigeria’s next president is to implement the PDP’s manifesto and the Nigerian Constitution.
According to him, the incumbent Sokoto State Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, was the Speaker of House of Representatives, when he defected from the then ruling PDP to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and he did not resign his Speakership position.
“It would be unfair for Senator President Bukola Saraki to resign his Senate President position; Governor Aminu Tambuwal was the House of Representatives Speaker and he did not resign as the Speaker when he left the PDP for APC. So why should Saraki resign for defecting from the APC to PDP? No one harassed Tambuwal, why should Saraki be harassed now?” Bafarawa queried.
He also said that the controversial siege on the National Assembly by security operatives remains an aberration and that this shows that Nigeria lack strong institution that needed to be addressed.
He also said he felt insulted, as a founding leader of the APC, who served as the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee of the party, that the party can asked him to summarily handed over the leadership of the party, in Sokoto to a former Governor Aliyu Wamakko, saying that was unjust and that the level of injustice on other fronts has worsen in APC, hence the crisis bedeviling the ruling party.
“It is important to entrench party supremacy. If the President is more powerful than the party’s national chairman, or the state governor is more powerful than the state party chairman, there would always be crisis, as it would be difficult to enforce party supremacy, check the excesses of elected officials and to ensure adherence to party manifesto,” he said.
