_E boo le mbe_ , Your Excellency Senator Saraki! 

Rafiu Ajakaye

For the sake of non-Yoruba speakers, _bo le mbe_ loosely means ‘come off it’. It is a language of the street to dismiss false or exaggerated claims. Other street boys will say _e kayi nah_ . It is the same thing. 

Different reviews have trailed the interview that Senator Bukola Saraki granted Channels TV on Thursday night. In an excerpt of it on Facebook, Saraki claimed that Kwara under his watch was better than Kwara today. 

The response he got (please see the attached screenshot) was akin to a story of the fabled Saudi Arabia returnee who said the chicken of Mecca is the height of a storey-building. _Alhaji e re nle!_ Calm down, Alhaji. 

Even the visually impaired knows there is no basis for comparison between Kwara of yesterday and today. It is not a joke that you will miss your way in Kwara today if you last visited in 2022. You will miss your way! That is the easiest test of the pace of infrastructure development in the state, particularly the capital city. 

Senator Saraki expectedly found solace in security issues, especially banditry and terrorism. Yes, the dynamics have changed across West Africa and the Sahel as a whole. We readily acknowledge that banditry and terrorism are a serious problem. We do not make any show of whose deaths are more; a human life is priceless. Every soul we have lost is irreplaceable. May God comfort every grieving family and forgive the dead. 

Every resource is being channelled to end the madness of the bad faith actors. The security agencies are never left without the support of the state government. And this is in hundreds of millions of naira every month. Kwara was among the pioneer states to recruit forest guards and it contributed immensely to their welfare till date. In a pragmatic search for solutions, the government is supporting communities to build resilience and curtail the evil. Victims are supported within ethical boundaries that do not cause bigger problems. 

We acknowledge that Senator Saraki is at liberty to weaponise this national calamity and the pains of everyone for political effect. The consolation is that people of good conscience can see through the bad politics as the comments under the post showed. 

In education, workers’ welfare, social security, healthcare, or fiscal prudence, there is no evidence to corroborate Saraki’s claims, which are, with due respect to His Excellency, mere platitudes. And platitudes are not facts. But they can make us happy. _Truthiness._ 

His Excellency may revisit my response to his similar claims in 2021, titled ‘A note on the Kwara journey’. It remains relevant for this discourse. But a lot has changed for the better since then. For instance, all the salary and pension debts that the Saraki-inspired administration left have been paid by the Otoge government. It was in billions. 

Between 2003 and 2019, a period of 16 years, their Excellencies Saraki and Abdulfatai Ahmed hired a total of 6,098 basic school teachers. Between 2019 and 2025, the Otoge administration hired 8,912 basic school teachers. The Teachers Salary Allowance (TSA), which went into coma in 2012 under a government His Excellency inspired, has been revived. In addition, Kwara under Otoge has just approved peculiar allowance for core civil servants. 

Today in Nigeria, Kwara is in the top highest salary payers for medical house officers, a strategy to keep doctors in the public health system. More will be done. His Excellency Saraki may also note the creation and accreditation on the first try by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) of the Kwara State University Teaching Hospital. That’s a no mean feat — it means good doctors can be produced and trained whilst serving the people of Kwara State. That’s another legacy of the Otoge administration. 

In road construction, institutional memory says the Kwara State Government did a total of 398.73 kilometres (including the 120km federal-funded) Chikanda road roads between 2003 and 2019; the Otoge administration has a total of 588.77km to its credit — aside from the 293km tax credit road the governor facilitated from the Federal Government. The Maths tells the story, even when we look at government’s revenue then and now. A few persons say Kwara now earns more; numbers don’t work that way. It is about what a million naira bought in 2019 and what it buys now. 

His Excellency Saraki may also check the current health indices of Kwara State today and yesterday. The latest National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) released by the Federal Ministry of Health adjudged Kwara as the best state for a child to be born and raised with the lowest under-5 mortality rate in Nigeria. Last week, Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq approved the enlistment of a large section of civil servants into the health insurance following an earlier negotiation with the labour. 

That is a first in our state. How? Yes, the Ahmed administration passed the health insurance law in 2017, but it didn’t implement it in any way. This administration activated it and we have at least 120,000 already enjoying health insurance this minute — apart from the civil servants who are to be brought into the net. 

The Otoge administration is not perfect. No government in the world is. But His Excellency is advised to quit comparing apples with oranges. They are not the same.  

And, finally, Your Excellency Saraki: the Otoge administration did not demolish any home called Ile Arugbo. No one lived there. The government removed a shanty UNLAWFULLY erected on a public land. This happened in 2020. Till date, no one has provided a tissue paper which links ownership of the land to your family. The court once struck out the legal challenge mounted by one Asa Investment, an opaque shell firm whose ‘owners’ at the corporate affairs commission did not include a Saraki. 

The public may note that the land, owned by KWSG and meant for collective use, was allocated to one Asa Investment in the early 2000s without a kobo paid to the treasury. This is the brief history of the land.

Now, the Senator Oluremi Tinubu Hospital (formerly civil service clinic) is taking a section of the land, while the remaining lot is hosting a civic centre — both of which are part of the many legacies of Otoge. I’m sure that hospital structure (never seen before in our state) must be the envy of Distinguished Senator Saraki!

▪︎ Dr Ajakaye is the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor of Kwara State