If Otoge Was a ‘Failure’, The Word Needs Another Meaning

Rafiu Ajakaye PhD.

A journalist wrote a piece last week, titled Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq: A 2027 misadventure? I told our ‘mutual friends’ how badly the article landed with me for three reasons. One, the fellow is a senior political journalist. Two, he holds a doctoral degree and this is no mean feat. Three, he was a government’s spokesman. His being a senior journalist, a former public officer, and an academic suggests experience, professionalism and tact, and respect for facts. But the article failed the test  of evidence.

E.H. Carr, the man that many regard as the father of scientific history, told us that objectivity is hardly possible in history. Not wanting to render historical accounts to the whims of just anyone, Carr quickly cautioned that historians are not entitled to their facts. The argument of Carr is that historical accounts must be grounded in relatable facts — even if the historian, himself a prisoner of his sentiments, chooses which facts to pick, promote, and interpret.

The author is based in Ibadan. He didn’t tell us that he recently visited Kwara or Ilorin, its capital city. But he asserted that Otoge has not done anything to justify the social revolution of 2019. He said the new administration has barely added anything new to the structures it inherited from Saraki and that Kwarans have not seen anything different from the past. “The fact that you can hardly point to visible structures as legacies of the Otoge government appears more worrying for the people,” he had said. He gave no statistics to back these sweeping claims, raising concerns about the motives.

That is the basis for this response. Even if anyone had asked him to write what he did in the spirit of election propaganda, his standing as an academic and senior journalist should have told him there was a need for his own independent findings. And independent findings — even from his own sources in Ilorin — would have made a big difference.

On the Ahmadu Bello Way and its precincts alone, which is Kwara’s 10 Downing Street or its equivalent in Ibadan, the Otoge government of Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has added at least 10 new modern structures that have changed the skyline of the capital city for generations to come. These legacy structures include the International Conference Centre Ilorin; Revenue House (now the tallest building in Kwara State and built exclusively with savings from consultancy fees that went to private pockets in the past); Justice Saidu Kawu CourtHouse, primed to be one of the best in Nigeria; multistorey Senator Oluremi Tinubu Hospital; the Convention Center; Finance House; remodelled Kwara Hotel; Innovation Hub (which now has solid partnerships with the US Government, UNDP, IHS Towers); Visual Arts Centre; and Ministry of Education Complex.

The Otoge administration has many other major projects elsewhere in Ilorin and other towns, including but not limited to the two campuses of the Kwara State University in Osi and Ilesha Baruba, Shea Butter Factory in Kaiama, Garment Factory, Offa Stadium and Lafiagi Stadium, the refurbished Kwara Indoor Sports Hall, Africa’s biggest squash court, multistorey Model School in Adeta, Kwara State University of Education, and Sugar Factory Film Studio. Those are structures with 100% or substantial additions from the Otoge administration.

In road infrastructure and education, among others, the new administration has shown how to do things differently. Today, the writer will likely miss his way if he comes to Ilorin without a guide who has been to the city in the last three years. For specifics, the Otoge administration has delivered at least 588.77km of roads, apart from the 293kms of the tax credit roads that the Governor facilitated to the state. This is different from the more than 100 interlock access roads in the hinterlands of Ilorin. Senator Saraki and his successor, HE Abdulfatai Ahmed, gave the state a total of 398.73km of roads, including the 120km Chikanda road funded by the Federal Government.

These huge achievements have sparked conversations about who has done more between the incumbent Governor and two of his predecessors David Bamigboye and George Agbazika Innih. Abdulrazaq has not just upgraded the infrastructure in the capital city, he has added new ones across the state.

In the education sector, the author is urged to check the state of Kwara in 2019: the blacklist by UBEC since 2013 and how the new administration has rescued the sector. The stories are everywhere on the internet and can be verified with different institutions. For instance, Saraki and Ahmed hired a total of 6,098 teachers. If you want to be generous and add the sunset teachers who were later disengaged as a result of how they were hired, the tally goes up to 8,174 in 16 years. The story of these hires is another thing. In a space of seven years, however, the Otoge administration has added 8,912 teachers to the stream. These tallies, among others, do not support the unfair narrative by the writer. He should also  investigate how the Otoge government hired teachers and tell which one makes him proud as an academic. If Otoge came to expand opportunities for every Kwaran, he should give the Governor his flowers for how he gave equitable opportunity to all applicants.

Without being immodest or crediting it with perfection, the Otoge administration and the Saraki regimes are incomparable in the quantum of infrastructural development they brought to the state, including in workers’ welfare and respect for human dignity. Even in revenue generation, no administration has raised the state’s IGR as the Otoge’s, moving it from N30.6bn in 2019 to N92.1bn by the end of 2025. This happened through improved efficiency, automation of processes, and expansion of the tax base from 47,368 in 2019 to 1,417,974 as of March 2026.

I concede the right of the author to take positions on whether the Kwara State Government should prosecute Saraki or not. My consolation is that he is not the court where pronouncement on the merit or otherwise of a judicial case is made. His contentions on what the DPP report said or did not say are evidence-free, and his attempt to try the case in the media speaks volumes.

Like everyone else, he is also entitled to his opinion about what steps the state government has taken on security issues or not — especially in the light of the recent breaches so far reported in Oyo, Osun, and even Lagos where a 19-year-old was recently arrested for abduction cases. Yet none of these states has the land mass of Kwara, while the complexity of its geography is only comparable to that of Oyo. In fact, Baruten alone is bigger in land size than Osun State. The same Baruten is more than three times the size of Lagos. Regardless, the government is working with security forces to improve public safety. This gulps hundreds of millions of naira every month as it does hours of engagements with stakeholders on how to stem the tide, bearing in mind the pressure from the crisis in the Sahel and the issues in the North West. I am confident that we will get over it.

Now, it is inappropriate (as the writer tried to do) to review a case already filed before the court, so I urge him and others to follow the judicial proceedings which will reveal the case of the government against Saraki, who is neither guilty nor innocent until a court has said so.

This response is a matter of historical significance because revisionism and outright falsehood are often a feature of every election year. But don’t the public deserve to know the facts?

Rafiu Ajakaye, House of Representative aspirant, was Chief Press Secretary to Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq CON