Saraki: Linking Tinubu to my Buhari-era prosecution is unfair

FORMER Senate President, Mr Bukola Saraki,has said it is unjust to associate Bola Ahmed Tinubu with the legal challenges he faced during the administration of the late Muhammadu Buhari.

Speaking on Politics Today on Channels Television on Thursday, Saraki rejected suggestions that Tinubu exerted influence over decisions taken under Buhari’s government.

The case against Saraki dates back to September 2015, when the Code of Conduct Bureau brought charges of false asset declaration before the Code of Conduct Tribunal. Saraki argued that attributing his prosecution to Tinubu is misplaced, stressing that his actions at the time were guided by what he believed served the country’s best interest.

“It is not fair to President Bola Tinubu because, as we all know, during the Buhari administration, he did not wield the level of influence people now claim,” Saraki said.

He maintained that his prosecution stemmed from decisions he made while leading the Senate, rather than any involvement by Tinubu. According to him, matters such as the tribunal case, the Offa robbery allegations, and the National Assembly forgery issue were driven by the executive arm of government.

PDP convention

Saraki added that Tinubu was neither part of the decision-making process nor involved in the execution of those actions.

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On the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he said the convention held in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, on November 15 and 16, 2025, triggered a series of legal battles, further deepening internal divisions within the PDP.

He noted that in the build-up to the event, the PDP reconciliation committee, which he chaired at the time, alongside the party’s board of trustees, advised against the convention, but their recommendations were not heeded.

“I screamed, I shouted at that time, and said, ‘Look, don’t let us go and do this convention. The best thing for us at this point in time is let us have a caretaker committee,” Saraki said.

“I made a statement. There was a special committee set up. They came and I told them my advice is that we should not go to that convention.

”We should have a caretaker committee because it was clearly the best solution for us, and that if we did that, we would have avoided this issue of different factions. Unfortunately, they did not heed that advice.”

Saraki said the convention was ill-timed, noting that the party had not fully reconciled its internal disputes before the event.

“The purpose of going to Ibadan for any convention was for everybody to be on board and agree on what we were going to do when we got there, and meet all the criteria that had been demanded,” he said.

“There was the issue of congresses in some states that had not been conducted. There were also talks about who should take which positions across the zones. So, when you go to those conventions, it should be affirmation, and you should have resolved issues behind the scenes.”

He stressed that his committee repeatedly warned against proceeding with the convention due to these unresolved issues.

“We said, ‘Don’t go to Ibadan. Don’t go to that convention’. There was no point going. Instead, let us form a caretaker committee. If we had done that, we would not have this crisis,” he said.

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“Before that, we were not in court. There were not these kinds of cases against different parts of the party until after the Ibadan convention.”

The former Kwara governor also detailed how his reconciliation committee stabilised the PDP ahead of the convention, noting that the committee worked for months to keep the party united despite mounting tensions.

“With greatest humility, what we are seeing now would have happened a long time ago. We kept it together for months, trying to keep all the forces together,” he said.

He recalled that there were doubts about the party’s ability to function, including fears that key organs would not be able to meet.

“People thought we would never be able to have a NEC meeting, never be able to bring the governors together. But throughout that period, we kept it together right up to just before the convention,” he said.

“We were the last party that stayed together without being divided into factions. We avoided all the booby traps along the way,” Saraki said.

He revealed that he personally mediated between governors and former governors to build trust and sustain unity within the party until the Ibadan convention.