President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday met behind closed doors with the committee set up by the Senate to interface with him over alleged attempt by the police to implicate Bukola Saraki, the Senate President, in a criminal case.
Saraki had recently raised the alarm that Ibrahim Idris, the Inspector General of Police, IGP, was planning to implicate him in a cult case in Kwara State.
The IGP, Ibrahim Idris, was said to have ordered for the transfer of some of the suspected criminals from Kwara State to police headquarters, Abuja, which Saraki feared was aimed at implicating him, considering the running battle between the Senate and the police boss.
Though the Senate had during plenary presided over by Ike Ekweremadu, the Deputy Senate President, nominated Saraki to lead the delegation, he was absent at the meeting.
But Ahmad Lawan, the Senate Leader, who led the committee to State House, discussed the matter with the President, among other issues relating to the frosty relationship between the legislature and the executive.
Speaking to State House correspondents after the meeting, Lawan confirmed that Saraki’s issue was, indeed, part of the discussion but declined to elaborate on it.
However, Senator Abdulahi Adamu, a member of the committee, who spoke to a television station in Hausa, said it was the Saraki versus the Inspector-General of Police issue that they discussed with the President.
He said, “The Senate President made some comments to the effect that he received a call from his governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed that some persons, suspected to be cultists who are undergoing investigation in Ilorin, Kwara state will be transferred to Abuja and it is becoming a problem. That is why the governor intimated him.
“That is why it was decided that we should come, as leaders in the Assembly to hear what is going on and if anything can be done about it.”
On why the police should not be allowed to do work, he said: “That cannot stop us from coming to see the President on the matter and to hear from him if you really know what had been happening at the Assembly.
“If there is a harmonious working relationship between the executive and legislature and even the judiciary, all these type of things will not come up and even if they do come, not in the way they are coming up now.
“A small matter is often overblown and it becomes a problem for everybody. This is the result of some unnecessary utterances because things are not going as expected.
“So long as suspicion and accusations continue to exist within the minds of some people who ordinarily shouldn’t have them, these things will continue.”
Senator Adamu admitted that politics was involved in the ongoing controversy saying: “Of course, it is. You don’t need to be told, it is surely politics.
“A senior Police officer in Kwara had stated that the name of the Senate president was not mentioned and if that is the case, there is no need for all these emissaries but since we have decided that a team should come, we have come to hear from the President and he listened to us.”
Asked what the President told the committee, he said: “I can’t tell you that.”
Other members of the committee include Chief Whip, Olusola Adeyeye; Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio; Danjuma Goje; Sam Egwu; Aliyu Wammako; Fatima Raji-Rasaki and Oluremi Tinubu.
