Date: 2016-12-08

Plans for the formation of a mega party are creating increasing dissonance within the two major political parties in the country with eyes turning on Senate President, Bukola Saraki, as the beautiful bride of the major agitators. Meanwhile, promoters of the mega party, Vanguard learned, are moving to ensure that the party has a complete national outlook with faces from all geopolitical zones on board. Crucial to the move, it was learned, is the enrolment of some former governors mostly of the former ruling party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, into the mega party. Retired generals with political bent are also being recruited into the movement, Vanguard gathered.

Meanwhile, against earlier projections of the Senate President being hounded out of office, Senator Saraki, it was learned, has become a beautiful bride to those in the APC who want to remain and those who want to opt out. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, had repeatedly been mentioned as among those to leave for the mega party. Tinubu, however, issued a rebuttal on Monday as he insisted he would remain in the party he helped to build. Repeated efforts to get a confirmation or otherwise on Atiku's stance, as at press time, yesterday were not successful.

Atiku and Saraki had forged a sort of collaboration just before the National Assembly leadership election in 2015 as supporters of both men within the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, closed ranks to throw up Saraki as Senate President as against the inclination of the Tinubu/Muhammadu Buhari tendency in the ruling APC. That collaboration was underpinned by the stoicism with which Atiku's Man Friday, Timi Frank, the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the APC, flayed the attacks against Saraki.

However, multiple sources confirmed to Vanguard that Buhari's associates, following the fallout with Tinubu in Kogi and Ondo States, have opted to collaborate with Saraki towards ensuring the realisation of the President's second term ambition in 2019.

Towards that end, Saraki, it was learned, has become a key political strategist within the Buhari political tendency and was instrumental to the strategic political moves that helped win the Ondo State governorship election for the APC. The position of Saraki in the APC was accentuated last week after his political godson, Bolaji Abdullahi, was named to take up the position of National Publicity Secretary, a position vacated by Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

"True, Lai Muhammed was originally from Kwara, but he was Asiwaju's own Kwaran, who is more or less a Lagosian. When Muhammed went on to become Minister of Information, the implication was that Asiwaju and the ACN block had nobody left in the party's executive hierarchy.

Instead, it is Saraki that now has his man as the voice and face of the party," Mr. Tope Ajayi, a source privy to the developments, told Vanguard. The Tinubu camp, it was learned, has, however, not given up on Saraki as associates are said to be making regular contacts with the Saraki camp towards projecting a common front towards the 2019 contests. Political commentators have also noted how the Presidency has recently been falling back to please the Senate President and sometimes making sacrifices to please him.

In one of the latest gestures to the Senate President, Pastor Yissa Benjamin, a former Speaker of Kwara State House of Assembly who was nominated to the board of the National Communications Commission, NCC, from Kwara State in the days of the acrimony between the Presidency and Saraki was dropped by the Senate without much of a complaint by the Presidency.