TAIWO FAROTIMI
The Directorate of State Service, DSS has reversed self over the withdrawal of security details attached to Bukola Saraki, Senate president. This followed the intervention of Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President. Reports have it that Osinbajo after getting wind of the plan by the police, as reportedly approved by President Muhammadu Buhari, to invite Saraki for questioning, decided to wade into the crisis.
After consulting with the president, Osinbajo then had a meeting with Ibrahim Idris, inspector general of police, Saraki and Lawan Daura, the director general of the DSS. The meeting was said to have agreed that while Saraki, not being above the law, should respond to his reported link with a leading member of the gang of robbers that operated recently in Offa, Kwara State, he should do so in writing.
The meeting agreed that an invitation to the police for interrogation will impugn on the dignity of the office of the Senate president, the country’s number three citizen. That was not the only concession that Saraki got from that meeting at the State House, Abuja. The Vice President also got the DSS to review its earlier decision to withdraw Saraki’s security details. The DSS had pulled out nine of the fifteen security men originally attached to the Senate president. It has since sent four of its men to report back to the Senate president , leaving five to make up.
But really at the background is the political consideration that takes care of the interest of President Buhari.
Saraki is a key member of the New People’s Democratic Party, nPDP, which currently at loggerheads with the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
The political movement which is an integral part of the APC effected a major change in the political calculation ahead of the 2015 election. They had pulled out of the PDP, causing a great deal of upset that culminated in the defeat of Goodluck Jonathan, then president.
The APC and the nPDP have been having discussions over complaints by the nPDP that the administration of Buhari sidelined them in the scheme of things. The major troubleshooter has been Osinbajo and he must have realised how a full scale confrontation with Saraki may further jeopardise the talks.
