Rotimi Sulyman is the Publicity Director of Ilorin Emirate for Buhari (IEB), a political group promoting President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election bid in Kwara State. In this interview with Kunle AkinrinAde, he speaks on the succession battle in the Northcentral state.
WHAT impact is the Senate President Bukola Saraki’s defection from the APC to the PDP likely to have on President Buhari’s r-eelection, particularly in Kwara State?
We are no under illusion that it is not a setback. But, it is a mixed bag, with lot of positives to take from it. The opposition is currently riding on the crest of wave of the Senate President’s defection to the PDP. For the very first time in his own political career, his defection has afforded the critical mass opposed to the Saraki’s hegemony of Kwara State to align with the centre; and this development may send him and his political dynasty into eternal oblivion come 2019. It is no longer business as usual for the Senate President. In fact, during the last local government election held November last year, while he was in the APC, Saraki lost in his polling booth where he voted and in his ward to the PDP; even though the election results were manipulated across the state in his former party’s favour. There are lots of factors that have conspired to reduce his influence in Kwara politics: one is poverty, which his hegemony of the state’s politics has foisted on Kwara residents over the last 16 years on account of misrule of successive governments. He was governor between 2003 and 2011 and together with his successor, Abdulfatah Ahmed who he made governor, they have a place reserved for them in the state hall of shame, on account of their gross appropriation and mismanagement of our commonwealth. Despite owing civil servants, Ahmed found it convenient to build multi-billion naira residence for his predecessor. Poverty now walks on two legs in Kwara. For a civil servants’ state, government workers are being owed months of salary arrears, particularly teachers in public primary schools, who are owed almost six month salaries. The other is the Buhari factor. The people of Kwara are in love with the President. Their yummy relationship dates back to his time as military head of state, when our son, the late Major-General Tunde Idiagbon was his defacto vice president. Currently, about five thousands farmers from the state are beneficiaries of the N1billion 2018 CBN Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP). Three of our roads namely; the Michael-Imoudu-Ganmo-Afon Junction, Afo-Aboto-Oyo State road; and Ilorin-Bode-Saadu-Jebba Road are being reconstructed by the Federal government and are nearing completion. In any election in the state between both, Saraki stands no chance against Buhari. In the 2015 general election, Buhari polled 302,146 votes to defeat Goodluck Jonathan, who secured 132,602 votes. The total votes all the three senators, including Saraki had, was not up to 250,000. The other thing is that people’s patience with the Saraki dynasty has grown thin and they want a change badly.
You see, as a Yoruba expression goes, May God not put our survival in a difficult place. In the first place, how did they get to the positions they occupied? It was by sucking up to the Senate President. They don’t have electoral value. Individually, they cannot win their polling unit, much more their wards. You see, all the civilian governors that had governed the state from Adamu Attah in 1979, Cornelius Adebayo in 1983, Shaba Lafiagi in the aborted Third Republic, the late Muhammed Alabi Lawal to the incumbent Abdulfatah Ahmed they were produced by the Saraki dynasty. So, the Sarakis have been playing god in the affairs of Kwarans for three decades. Even all the ministers produced by the state, except Lai Muhammed, were their products. However, we all know that it is God who ultimately rules in men’s affairs. For we, Muslims, Prophet Mohammed (SWA) was the last prophet of God, and the name Ahmed is the same as Mohammed. So, in that regard, Gov. Ahmed will be the last governor of the state produced by the Sarakis. At least, no empire lasts forever. The Sarakis empire is already falling apart, given the acrimonious relationship between the Senate President and his half-sister, Senator Gbemisola Saraki. The centre has ceased to hold between them since 2011, when he worked against her ambition to succeed him as governor. We, Kwarans, have long suffered the indignity of being referred to as ‘Saraki’s slaves’, and we want to prove that we are free-born come 2019. The last time I checked, Mauritania is the last country to abolish slavery and not Nigeria. But, in Kwara, we are at the whim of an individual and a famil
I don’t subscribe to such simplistic reductionism of the renewed interest in restoring durbar, an event that used to be yearly in Ilorin back then before it was put in abeyance. We are all emir’s subjects and same before him and he has no preference. But, what I know is that the Senate President is fond of ingratiating himself with the emir, Alh. Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari. This may be because his late father, Olusola Saraki, who we all know died of cancer on deathbed, in camera, pleaded with the emir to take good care of him after his demise.
It is the beauty of democracy that people are throwing their hats into the ring and not the other way round, as it happening in the Senate President’s camp, where aspirants are waiting for the lord of the manor’s approval before hanging their posters. But, among them all in the APC, I am of the view that four persons stand tall: the incumbent Director General of Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Ishaq Modibo Kawu, the CEO of First Fuel and owner of amateur football club side, FC Abuja, Abdulrahman Abdulrasak, the son of late Ambassador Garba Gobir, a trained pharmacist and serial entrepreneur and cerebral banker and businessman, Lukman Mustapha.