Former Senate President Bukola Saraki has accused erstwhile President Muhammadu Buhari of sabotaging several efforts to improve the lot of Nigerians.

“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,” Mr Saraki claimed while speaking at the 2025 Reunion Gala Celebration of King’s College Old Boys Association of North America, Houston, during the weekend.

The PDP chieftain 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.” 

The Code of Conduct Bureau had in September 2015 slammed an 18-count charge on Mr Saraki after a Supreme Court’s judgment validated the charges preferred against him by the then Buhari-led administration.

The former senate president was later exonerated of all the charges after the two-person panel of the Code of Conduct Tribunal unanimously upheld the no-case submission which Mr Saraki filed after the prosecution closed its case in May 2017.

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.”

Mr Saraki further noted that many elected officers in the country lack the requisite knowledge to drive useful policies, asking Nigerians to engage in genuine political participation.

“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,” stated Mr Saraki.