Former Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki has revealed reasons for his important decision in 2019.
It was an opportunity for him to shed some light on events that happened before, during and after the 2019 gubernatorial election in Kwara State.
Saraki accused the ruling APC of politicizing issues and using ‘otoge’ as a platform to gain the support of electors in the State of Harmony who, he added, were manipulated.
Otoge’ was the slogan used by the Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC during the 2019 general election.
Saraki, who said this in an interview on Arise TV’s ‘The Morning Show’ on Tuesday, disclosed that the PDP gubernatorial candidate during the 2019 gubernatorial election, Hon Razak Atunwa was persuaded not to appeal against the ruling of the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal.
The tribunal headed by Justice Bassy Effiong had on September 20, 2019 upheld the declaration of Mallam Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq as winner of the March 9, 2019 gubernatorial election by the electoral umpire; the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Saraki said the people of Kwara State have since realized their mistakes.
‘If you come to Kwara today and talk to people, you’ll find that a lot of them will tell you that ‘we were sold lies and propaganda…we have made certain mistakes in following up the issues’ and that at the end of the day, they were better of then than now.
So, one of the things you also learn in politics is that you must also accept that sometimes the electorates will go with emotions. The electorates are always right, they will go with their emotions at times and they can later come back and say ‘We think we got it wrong here’.
Because at the end of the day in Kwara, there was no substance. It was raw propaganda and that’s what they are saying.
After losing the election, I immediately congratulated the other party and I told my supporters to give them support.
Our gubernatorial candidate who wanted to (challenge the outcome), went to the election petition tribunal and wanted to go to the Supreme Court (but) we called him and said ‘look, let’s cooperate, don’t go beyond election tribunal’ and now it is members of the party themselves and the people that are saying ‘we made a mistake here’.
So, what was learned from that is that the electorates sometimes, maybe after there is fatigue or a party has been in government for so long, the people will say I want to try something else. Sometimes those decisions are made on sentiments as opposed to what is actually on ground’, he said.
