DON’T CRY FOR SARAKI………. YET

By Joseph Edgar…

Official reports emerging show that the Senate President may have lost in his comeback bid. This, on the face value, is looking like a huge bang. For a politician the caliber of the Senate President not to win this bid, and to have lost at such a huge margin, beats the imagination of the keen observer.

I have seen a video posted on social media by his estranged sister in an imbecilic pose with tongue stretched out and in a bid to mock the Senate President for his defeat.

But as one looks critically at the process, one begins to see other factors inked to the matter. While we wait for INEC’s other results before throwing up a critical analysis, I decided to reach a source very close to the man himself and his position was really eye opening.

According to him, this was expected by the Saraki camp. The Presidency would have displayed a huge sense of naivety to allow this reelection going by the brushes both sides had gone through in the last four years. All resources were to be thrown into the project not to allow a return and this left the target with one of two options. Fight it or allow it and then concentrate more on the more critical effort of getting Atiku elected.

The second option looks like what was decided upon as the Senate President threw himself into the campaign in his capacity as the Director-General of the Atiku organization. As this was going on, the other side went to town, uprooting structures and ensuring the defeat of the man that has more than most been the thorn in the flesh of the present administration.

So as we await INEC’s official position on this and all the other elections, one thing that is very clear is the fact that the battle has only just begun. This is because from what we are seeing, the fact is that no matter who emerges at the federal level we would not be seeing a Jonathan-type acquiesce. Nigerians should begin to brace themselves for a long state of inertia and uncertainty as the political gladiators brace up for the next level of ‘war’.

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I do not see any statesman-like resolve to allow ‘peace’. What we will be facing will be a conundrum of court cases, war by other means all aimed at either retaining power or seizing it. At this point the camouflage both sides were parading during the electioneering campaigns will wear off and we will be confronted with naked lust for power with the gloves off.

For me, I think I am now officially tired of this generation of leaders on all sides. They should come and do and ‘go’ so that the next generation would attempt a credible and better sensible push at true leadership.

My source concluded the talk with the statement that I should never forget that ‘politics is a game’. That sentence comes with a robust meaning. Pregnant with insinuations all negative applications to the general people.

All these are actors, friends and colleagues who jostle for power in a macabre game that would ensure control of centralized power all for canine interest while pretending that the interest of the people is being taken care of.

It is this game that just played out in Saraki’s polling unit and it is this game with draconian ‘winner takes all’ rule that Saraki would be playing as he plots his next line. This would really be interesting to see.

Meanwhile, we await INEC, about time.

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