Again, AbdulRazaq , Saraki Fight Dirty

Hammed Shittu writes that the camps of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State and Dr. Bukola Saraki are at daggers drawn to the heart of the people

The battle for the soul of Kwara state ahead of 2003 has continued unabated as the two leading political gladiators in the state have refused to sheath their swords on who will lead the state and this has continued to generate political tension.

The former Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki has not relaxed in his determination to reclaim the leadership of the state since he lost political power to the current leadership in the state headed by the state governor, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq during the 2019 elections

Saraki fondly called “Sai “Bukky.” by his supporters, has set all strategies on ground through his party, Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) to garner more support so as to wrestle power from he ruling APC.

On the part of Governor AbdulRazaq, he has not hidden his feelings to seek reelection come 2023 and his party, the ruling APC has been working round the clock so as to ensure the status quo remains in the next elections.

This present scenario has brought the two political gladiators into public domain and thereby leading to the exchange of words over the governance of the state in the bid to win the next elections.

Although, strong indications have it that, a third force may also come forward to challenge the two dominant parties leadership during the poll so as to provide an opportunity for the people of the state to make a choice when the battle for the Ahmadu Bello Government House, Ilorin sets in during the next elections.

While the ruling APC is leaving no stone unturned to present the incumbent Governor of the state, Alhaji AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq for second term, it is only waiting for the outcome of the national convention of the party slated for February 26.

Already, the governor has taken over all the party structures in the state in order to assist him to actualize his reelection bid.

Last year’s state primaries of the APC has attested to this fact. From the wards, local and state levels, executives of the party in the state are in the hands of the governor without any hindrance.

The opposition, PDP in the state led by Saraki have also been embarking on membership drive and mobilisation across the wards in the state so as to help the party wrestle power from the ruling the APC.

The APC primaries held at Atlantic Event centre, Ilorin was also attested to this fact as it was held in a peaceful manner and devoid of any faction in the party.

Also, the recent decision of the leadership of the party to zone the governorship ticket to the Kwara north senatorial district of the state ahead of the next polls has set another agenda for the PDP to actualize its main move to reclaim power during the period under review.

The development according to political pundits in the state was meant to address the feelings of the people of the Kwara North senatorial district, having been disallowed for many years to take governorship ticket of the state.

The last time the zone took the slot was during the time of the former govenror Muhammed Shaaba Lafiaji in 1992 but it was shortlived because of military intervention. Since then, the state has been governed by the people of the Kwara Central senatorial district and the Kwara South senatorial district of the state.

It will be noted further that, the former Naval officer, Late Muhammed Alabi Lawal from the Kwara Central senatorial district was elected as the govenror of the state in 1999. The former governor tried to have a second term then but the political battle between his godfather and strongman of Kwara politics, Late Dr. Olusola Saraki denied him a second term to rule the state.

Instead, the scion of the godfather and former Presidential Aide to former president Olusegun Obasanjo, Dr. Saraki emerged as the governor of the state in the keenly contested governorship election of 2003 against late Alhaji Muhammed Lawal.

Bukola Saraki however emerged the governor of the state during the period under review and later ruled the state till year 2011, thus completed his second term in office of eight years, thereby paving way for the second time for the people of the Kwara Central senatorial district to rule the state.

After the second term in office of the former Saraki, the Share born technocrat and banking guru, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed took over the mantle of leadership of the state in 2011 and ruled the state till 2019. Ahmed hails from the Kwara South senatorial district of the state.

After former governor Ahmed ruled the state for second term in office, the incumbent governor of the state, Alhaji AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq who also hails from the Kwara Central senatorial district took over the mantle of leadership of the state and he has since been in charge of the state.

However, in view of this development in the state, the people of the Kwara North senatorial district ahead of 2023 formed themselves into a pressure groups to agitate for the power shift in the coming elections.

For past seven months, the people of the Kwara North senatorial district have been embarking on series of mobilisation and contacts across all borders of the zone to intimate their people on the need to join the train of power shift in the state ahead of the next poll in the state.

Some stakeholders of the PDP in the Kwara Central senatorial district have continued to have their reservations over the move by the leadership of the party to take the governorship ticket to the Kwara north senatorial district in view of the maximum votes in the Kwara Central senatorial.

Some of them who spoke on the condition of anonymity over the development said that, taking the governorship ticket to the north this time around may be suicidal for the PDP, knowing fully that if the Governor AbdulRazaq recontests, the people of Kwara Central may go for him as against the candidate from the North.

Although, the leadership of the PDP has told north senatorial to go home and work together to bring o consensus candidate from the zone by February this year and failure to do this, the party leadership may use its sledge hammer to go for other zones to pick the governorship candidate of the party ahead of the next poll.

Already, governorship aspirants from the party in the North have increased to 10. The aspirants cut across the ruling APC and the PDP and have been mapping out plans to educate and mobilize the people of the zone for the plumb position.

Following the decision of the PDP to zone its governorship ticket to the Kwara north senatorial district ahead of the next general elections, the ruling APC government in the state seems not too comfortable over the purported zoning arrangement as the number three man presently in the state who is the speaker of the state House of Assembly, Rt Hon. Yakubu Salihu-Danladi hails from the Kwara North senatorial district of the state.

Reports in the Kwara North senatorial district revealed that, the Speaker has been positioned to take over the leadership of the state come 2027 after the incumbent Governor might have completed his second term in office and this has brought a new twist into the political leadership of the state ahead of the next poll in the state.

Although, the incumbent Governor is yet to declare his intention to run for the second term in office in the state but some stakeholders in the state especially the ruling APC have said in many fora that the Ahmadu Bello Government House, Ilorin is not vacant come 2023.

Moreover, in order to position the APC led government ahead of the poll, a well structured article was recently released to the media in Ilorin by the Governor AbdulRazaq’s Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Rafiu Ajakaye.

It was titled, “A Note on the Kwara Journey”. Ajakaye said that, “On October 26, 2021, former senate president Bukola Saraki was on a national television to attempt a rebrand of himself ahead of the 2023 election.

“In what many have called his signature conceit and the groupthink into which his beleaguered camp has sunk, the politician said the people of Kwara had misjudged his dynasty. He feels Kwara was better off in 2019 — the same truthiness his henchmen and social media kamikazes have latched onto.

“American satirist Stephen Colbert defined truthiness as a situation whereby people make claims they desired to be true even when there is no evidence to support that. For the former senator and his followers, what unseated the dynasty was propaganda.

“This claim, in itself, is an unforgivable crime against the people who lived the grim realities and indignities of his ironfisted rule. Nobody got anything in Kwara except through and from them. But there is a group feeling among the Sarakites — with perhaps a few exceptions — that they were never wrong and that they cannot be wrong. It is what pushes them to deny what everyone knew about the Kwara story”.

He added, “2022 will see a ridiculous spike in how Sarakites ‘create their own realities’, apologies to Karl Rove. Before that happens, it is important to remind them, and anyone who may be listening to or echoing them, where Kwara was in 2019 and where it is now.

“As sarakites bade public office farewell in 2019, data from the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) DHIS2 platform showed that maternal mortality ratio in Kwara was 1,404.4 per 100,000 deaths. That was the second highest in Nigeria after the insurgence-wracked Borno State. Given the situation of Borno, it is only fair to say Kwara actually wore the ignoble crown. At the end of 2020, maternal mortality ratio for Kwara came down to 20.7 per 100,000 live births, the second lowest in the country after Ekiti”.

Ajakaye explained that, “difference between pre-May 2019 and 2020 is leadership, its priorities, and understanding of what constitutes development.

“For years, UNICEF and other development agencies left Kwara. Supplemental immunisation dropped drastically due to non-payment of counterpart funds by the state. Basic healthcare facilities collapsed statewide. As of 2019, the Kwara Primary Health Care Development Agency had just a nurse to itself. You read that well. Consequently, attendance in public primary hospitals hit a record low of just 43,936.

“Between 2019 and now, Kwara has attained the status of a ‘State with High Political Will and Commitment’ in public health sector spending for obvious reasons. At 81.3%, 83.4% and 75.3% respectively, the capital spendings in the health sector for 2019, 2020, and 2021 have obviously been staggering. The results are glaring in the quality and quantum of facilities.

“From one nurse in 2019, the Primary Health Care Development Agency now has 44 nurses, a 4,300% raise. Supplemental immunisation is back. Rollback malaria programme is active. At least 27 primary healthcare facilities have been fixed across the state.

“The results are rewarding. To date, attendance in primary healthcare has risen to 306,328, representing 597.2% increase in public confidence in the system. Infant mortality is down from 2.6 in 2019 to 0.4 per 1000 live births at the close of 2020, while under-five deaths slowed to 0.4, down from 4.8 per 1000 births in 2019. In 2019, Kwara came a woeful 36th — second only to Oyo — in the National Lot Quality Assurance Survey (LQAS), which determines the level of coverage for immunisation in each state. All of its 16 local government areas failed the survey”.

He noted that, “By 2020, however, Kwara had moved to 18th position in the survey authored by the NPHCDA. The health insurance scheme has taken off, with tens of thousands of indigent families onboarded for free care, while a few corporate bodies have signed off to it.

“Kwara had not a single life-saving modern gadget like ventilator and defibrillators, among others, until Otoge happened. Basic things were not available and that naturally drained the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital which is ordinarily a tertiary facility. Things have changed. General Hospital Ilorin is ‘lit’ now: fixed with modern lifesaving medical gadgets and a detached intensive care unit that is the largest and best of its kind in the region. On top of that are the new accreditations that are a first for the hospital.

“From the abysmal 79,408 attendance in public secondary facilities in 2019, the state recorded 1,181,776, or 1,388.23% increase, attendance by the end of 2020. To date, no fewer than 14 secondary facilities have been worked on across the state.

“More than four decades after, the Otoge administration is fixing the Oro General Hospital, easing the decades of suffering in that corridor. Lafiagi General Hospital is seeing a historic transformation. Number of doctors rose 28.6% between 2019 and 2021, owing to new recruitments.

“Efforts have now been activated to stop the attrition in the sector with significant pay raise for doctors and other health workers, and a commitment to do a lot more”.

He further stated that, “In 2019, only 6,725 households were connected to public water sources in Kwara State. However, none of these households was getting water since the waterworks were either non-active, inoperative even as water corporation workers were on strike for lack of salary payment.

“Public water supply was not active in 2019, leaving the people at the mercy of politicians who moved round with water tankers in exchange for votes. This has changed.

“To date, the administration has increased the number of households connected to public water supply to 10,426, or 55%, with defined access to potable water. Number of public water stand pipes has risen by 1,107 more, or 72.31%. Measured against the population of the state, the figure is low but it represents a significant turnaround in the system.

“The administration has not only revived many of the moribund waterworks, including the one in Oyun, it is also building two new ones in Jebba (Moro) and Dumagi (Edu).

“A major legacy of the dynasty was the ghostly nature of the Kwara hinterlands. That was a function of many things, atop of which is the lack of basic amenities like functional schools with teachers, healthcare facilities, drinkable water, and access roads.

“Most schools in the Kwara hinterlands were without teachers, worsening the out-of-school children syndrome and drastically reducing the quality of education. In Isin and Oke Ero local governments, for instance, less than 50% of their senior secondary school teachers’ needs were met. Kaiama had just 68 teachers, falling below 45 percent of its needs, across its vast communities. Patigi had just 121, while Ekiti boasted just 135.

“Apart from fixing access roads and making sure that the basic healthcare facilities are modestly functional in the far-flung Kwara countryside, the Otoge administration has done so much to bridge their teaching requirements, including employing 2000 teachers for the Teaching Service Commission.

“It hired 120 new senior secondary school teachers in various subjects for Isin local government alone, representing 109% more than what it met. For Ekiti, 123 more teachers were engaged, representing 91.1% increase. Additional 80 teachers, representing 66.1% increase, were hired for Patigi. 50 new competent teachers (73.5% increase) were employed in Kaiama.

“At the basic schools, 2,701 more teachers were engaged to fill vacancies across the state, while various renovation or remodelling works are ongoing in 2,185 classrooms. Compared with the 2,379 dilapidated classrooms inherited in 2019, that is 91.85% less in the 2019 needs assessment.

“The icing on the cake is that Kwara is now a proud member of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) family in Nigeria. Kwara recently bested the whole of Nigeria at the President’s school debates.

“Some three years ago, the state was a pariah as it battled with an official blacklist provoked by its unlawful diversion of money meant for renovation of schools. This year, Kwara is joining Edo and Lagos to drive phenomenal change in basic education by introducing cutting-edge technology in public schools. It is called KwaraLEARN.

“From a state notorious for annual rituals of deaths and negative media headlines arising from stampede bred by prebendal politics, Kwara today runs the largest and most transparent social investment programme at subnational level, including the bi-monthly stipends (Owo Arugbo) for vulnerable senior citizens. Do a mental picture of an elderly woman receiving state support under the most dignifying condition and that of her contemporary who, at the mercy of some wild boys holding horsewhips, spent hours in the sun queuing to get N200 and a wrap of semo. Nothing more best captures the situation of Kwara in 2019 and now”.

Ajakaye pointed out that, “Saraki and his men are entitled to their opinions as democracy permits but they are not entitled to their ‘alternative’ facts. Kwara has not reached the Canaan Land but it has since left Egypt.

“The penury, the depth of deprivation, and the horrid infrastructural deficits that the Otoge administration is fixing are their legacies. It is a joke taken too far to expect, for instance, that those basic schools left to rot since 2013 when the state came under the hammer would all be fixed in a space of four years and by an administration that inherited billions of naira in unpaid salaries, pension, gratuity, and promotion arrears that sometimes dated back as far as 2012. Such things take time to fix and the AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq administration has shown good faith. To date, promotion arrears for the senior secondary school teachers have been sorted.

“Long abandoned to suffer with inconsistent salaries and career stagnation, teachers at the basic schools (SUBEB) now get their pay as and when due and are in the queue to get their well-deserved promotion arrears for the first time since 2017.

“From a state notorious for not paying pensioners in 2019, the Nigeria Union of Pensioners has just listed Kwara among the seven states that are up-to-date in monthly pension payment, bar the burdens inherited from 2019.

“From a paltry and inconstant N30m monthly release for gratuities in 2019, the Otoge administration now releases a minimum of N100m to pay gratuities every month. That is 233% more than the 2019 threshold!

“One is tempted to believe that the whole argument from the deposed dynasty is sheer doublethink or revisionism. They know too well that they played ‘god’ and failed the people of the state — as every indices point to — but they needed to put up a straight face that nothing actually happened. George Orwell must be turning in his grave to see this new height of doublethink. Followers of the dynasty have mostly been indoctrinated to think that way to be able to speak in favour of the sordid past.

“Notwithstanding the atrocities committed against the people of the state, such as blocking people’s rise on account of political difference, the messy sale of public properties to themselves at giveaway or zero prices, and the years of giving the impression that they ‘owned’ the state, it is hard to believe that they appear to have convinced themselves that the people have forgot and would simply reward them with a new mandate in 2023.

“They struggle to manufacture their own facts to create a false equivalence with the new administration. While the present administration lays no claim to perfection, there is simply no meeting point with the sordid past, which, like most dynasties in world history, had simply reached the height of its infamy — having, in the words of Ibn Khaldun, been ‘seized by senility and the chronic disease from which it could hardly ever rid itself and for which it could find no cure’.

“If you think this is not true, wait until Senator Saraki reminds Kwarans in his next interview that they were simply emotional, foolish and ungrateful to have voted him out in 2019 and that they are now sorry about that”.

But, the Media Office to the former Senate President, Dr. Saraki in its apparent reaction to the comment made by Mr. Ajakaye issued a statement on the comments of governance in the state, advising the Governor of the state, Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to cure himself of the fixation with the name of a man who assumed the post he is presently occupying 18 years ago and rather focus on how to provide efficient governance to the people of Kwara State.

In a statement issued by Mr. Yusuph Olaniyonu, he noted that Governor Abdulrazaq has continued to display the attitude of a man suffering from inferiority complex and that is why he would always talk about Saraki who left the office of Governor of Kwara State over a decade ago.

“The Media Office of Abubakar Bukola Saraki noted the ‘long essay’ written by Rafiu Ajakaye, the Press Secretary to Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq which was drifting with the name of Saraki from the headline to the last sentence.

“Ordinarily, one would ignore the piece as another diversionary gimmick being employed by a Governor and a government now reputed for failure to deliver on the numerous promises made to the people during elections.

“However, we consider it important to let the governor and his spin doctors know that the people have seen through their deception and thus, they should now direct their efforts towards delivering good governance to the good people of Kwara State.

“It is important for Abdulrazaq and his cohorts to be reminded that Saraki can never be governor again. He is not going to be on the ballot for the governorship in 2023. So, why do the governor and his government talk about Saraki every time? They should know that 2023 will be a verdict on whether he (the governor) had measured up to expectation as a competent and efficient administrator.

“The Kwara State governor should also know that 2023 will be a referendum on whether the promises he made to the people have been fulfilled. The election will not be about how many times he abused Saraki and what he did to antagonise the Saraki family.

“We also need to remind the Governor that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to which Saraki belong will field a competent, well educated, experienced, and acceptable gubernatorial candidate in the next general elections in Kwara State who will be ready to debate the performance of the current government in public fora and tell the people what policies, programmes, and projects they should expect from him.

“The Governor and his aides will be suffering from the grandeur of delusion to think that the major issues in Kwara State come 2023 will be their repeated lies and propaganda or false claims.

“Also, the next elections will not be based on empty sentiments. It will be about serious issues, a clear referendum on the performance of the incumbent and how to make Kwara greater”, the Media Office stated.

It chided Abdulrazaq and his aides for thinking the governor could get re-elected only by attacking Saraki and using his name to divert attention from the many inadequacies of the present administration.

The Abubakar Bukola Saraki Media Office further noted that while the government owes a responsibility to the people to periodically give them an account of its achievements, every government should know that the people are more discerning and they can sift the truth and separate it from empty claims or mere grandstanding.

It will be noted further that, this new twist in the sole control of the state ahead of next election is not the first time as the two major gladiators have been engaging themselves in hot words during the demolition of the country home of the late father of Dr. Saraki called Ile-Arugbo, five years remembrance prayers of late Dr. Olusola Saraki and the celebrations of the Eid-el Kabir in the state, all in the names of supremacy battle of the control of the State of Harmony.

Without mincing words, this recent altercations from the two gladiators in the state shows that, the race to Ahmadu Bello Government House, Ilorin will not an easy one between the duo as they enter a race to win voters in the state.