Former Senate President Bukola Saraki has accused ex-President Muhammadu Buhari of deliberately blocking legislative efforts that could have tremendously improved the the living condition of Nigerians.
Speaking at the 2025 Reunion Gala Celebration of King’s College Old Boys Association of North America in Houston over the weekend, Saraki said, “The legislature under my leadership was silenced, harassed, assaulted, bullied, and blackmailed, and the executive deliberately frustrated the passage of good laws, initiatives, and recommendations that would have been highly beneficial to our society.”
Reflecting on his time in office, Saraki added, “I could have agreed with everything the Presidency under Buhari wanted and cut deals with them all the way. I would have been a good ally.”
Saraki’s relationship with the Buhari administration was marked by a series of confrontations, including an 18-count corruption charge filed against him by the Code of Conduct Bureau in 2015, which was later dismissed by the Code of Conduct Tribunal in 2017.
Commenting on the public’s response to his leadership at the time, he said, “We were like orphans. The elite and ordinary people kept quiet, were nonchalant, and stayed aloof. When I read posts on social media or stories in the traditional media criticising the current National Assembly and praising our tenure, I just shrug my shoulders and feel unconcerned. This is a big failure of followership, and it is an enabler for the continuous failure of leadership. These sad developments are indications that our institutions are weak. Instead of building institutions, we are building strong men and women.”
Saraki also called for more robust political participation from Nigerians, urging them to hold leaders accountable.
“We should decide that from today, we will no longer keep quiet while our country is being misgoverned. We must always intervene when we see a wrong candidate being fielded, a wrong policy being implemented, or a wrong project being sited,” he stated.
