The other side of Oloye Saraki

Tunde Oyekola, who had monitored the activities of the political titan, Dr. Olusola Saraki that died on Wednesday in Lagos, tells some untold stories about the man.
Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki was not like the typical Nigerian politician. Once he placed his hand on the plough on to field, there was no looking back. He was a stickler to time, so, his movement from his home to office was predictable. And until he suddenly disappeared from public glare as a result of a protracted illness, he kept faith with the people on appointments.
His normal daily interactions with the thousands of people that converged on his office  usually began at 10.00 a.m. But before he arrived, many would have thronged the premises. The people, who ranged from the high and the low, the strong and the weak, the able-bodied to persons with physical challenges, would come with wide ranging issues, complaints and messages. They included peasants, artisans, market men and women, traditional rulers, as well as students from within and outside the country.
He was never intimidated by a crowd. He would gladly publicly acknowledge their thunderous adulation and shout of “Oloye” and the “Leader,” as he arrived and walked in and took his seat at 10.00 a.m. to attend to his visitors one after the other—sometimes in groups, depending on their individual missions.
As a trained medical doctor, Saraki constantly reminded his teeming admirers on the importance of good health. He preached the gospel of cleanliness as being next to godliness. Sometimes, he would employ metaphor to capture the essence and wisdom of the maxim. It was common for him to use Panadol, that common analgesic as imagery. He was said to have told his admirers and supporters on an occasion that if he prescribed panadol to them to soothe their nerves, they could refuse to use it. But if he offered them advice, they should heed it.
One other side of his lifestyle, especially in politics, was his pathological hatred for deceit, falsehood and betrayal. He valued trust and tended to repose confidence in people at his first encounter with them. If any of his close confidants and friends brought an individual with an aspiration for an elective office before him and sought logistic support, Saraki would willingly oblige. He would ensure that the fellow realised his aspiration. He would have made it crystal clear to the politician that he did not look forward to settlement and other forms of material patronage. In other words, he did not attach conditions to giving hope to many as he constantly declared that he strongly believed in the principle of sharing. But he would quickly abandon him once he established an act of betray and trust in such beneficiary of his kindness and generosity.
Described by many as a man with a large heart, Saraki demonstrated this in a spectacular way sometime in the past. At a time when many politicians would use and dump their followers, he surprised his own supporters and admirers during campaigns. He had made an arrangement to distribute bicycles free to them and made the plan a top secret. When he gave out the bicycles, the event became the talk of town, as it was said to be the first of its kind at that time in the political circle in the country.
It is on record that Saraki was the strong pillar behind the reconstruction of the popular Oja-Oba/Pakata Road in Ilorin, the Kwara  State capital. He alone donated the sum of £10,000 for the project. He was also the highest donor to the Ilorin Central Mosque when he donated N1 million in 1978, when the value of the naira surpassed the US dollar and the British pound.
To tackle the menace posed by the absence of potable water to the common people, he acquired tankers that supplied drinking water to residents of Ilorin and established a bakery where traders got supply without making deposits just as he complemented the project with a micro finance scheme, under which people obtained credit facilities without collateral for their business. This was part of his welfarist agenda that included free supply of food items, clothing and cash to the ordinary people, particularly during festive periods.
Between 1979 and 2007, Dr Saraki had held sway in the governorship elections in the state. In 1979, he backed Alhaji Adamu Attah to become governor on the platform of his party then, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), and in the August 1983 election, he supported Chief Cornelius Adebayo, who was elected on the platform of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). In 1991, Dr. Saraki threw his weight behind the election of Alhaji Shaaba Lafiagi as governor under the banner of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In the 1999 elections, his party, APP, produced Alhaji Alabi Lawal as governor. In 2003, Dr Saraki supported the ambition of his son, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, who become the state governor on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and stayed in the saddle for two terms of eight years.
However, in 2011, Dr. Saraki carried his daughter, Senator Rukayat Gbemisola Saraki, shoulder high and presented her for the office of the governor. The party which he founded then, the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), provided a platform for his daughter in an election which she eventually lost to the candidate of her brother’s party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Abdulfatah Ahmed.
Dr. Saraki, during his lifetime, was also instrumental in the emergence of many several federal and state legislators. His stance on loyalty was said to have accounted for the inability of many sitting governors, except his son, Senator Bukola Saraki, to succeed in their bids for a second term. He kept politicians in line and maintained peace in the state House of Assembly from the first legislative session to the present one. The septuagenarian kept his political edge until the flag of his leadership lowered on Wednesday.
Kwara politics after him
Nationally and locally, Dr. Saraki was a prominent and resilient political force who easily dwarfed many acknowledged political godfathers. He was, for many decades, a northern Yoruba politician although he himself seemed unable to come to terms with this fact during his various failed bids to become president as a candidate of the North, a vital link between the North and South, alternating between the progressive and conservative platforms.
He joined the progressive forces in the SDP during the aborted Third Republic. With the return of civil rule in 1999, Saraki traversed the ANPP, PDP, installing the state governor from 1999 to 2011. This means that Saraki literally took Kwara politics and its people wherever he wished. One huge implication of his death, obviously, then, is that this may not necessarily be the case henceforth.
For reasons of geo-ethnic politicking and primordial sentiments, Saraki continued to be regarded by the core northern establishment as an interloper from the South. Thus, with his passage, there is an urgent need to reinvent the wheel of North-South collaboration. In this connection, Saraki’s son, Senator Bukola Saraki, is gradually stepping into his father’s big shoes by playing the role of bridge builder within North and South. Bukola Saraki was particularly outstanding as chairman of the Nigerian Governor’s Forum (NGF) during the interregnum imposed on the country by the illness of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and the refusal to hand over power to Dr Goodluck Jonathan, who was then the vice president.
To those who are familiar with Kwara politics, the death of Dr. Saraki, the kingmaker for over three decades, signals a turning point. The question is whether the acknowledged Saraki dynasty will begin to implode or sustain the onslaught already, though falteringly, being launched by the emergent lesser political forces in the state, such as the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), in a bid to “rescue” the state from the dynasty. Saraki’s death has obviously opened up the debate for a fresh leadership in Kwara politics, if only for experimental purposes.
The intense political battle, which ensued after the late Dr. Saraki formed theACPN to lubricate the governorship ambition of his daughter ahead of the 2011 general election, saw the veteran politician, for the first time, being demystified in Kwara politics and, symbolically, also by his own son, using his (father’s) own structures nurtured over decades of turbulent politicking. Now that he is no more, the political stronghold of the younger Saraki, the current chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology, will be put to the test. Although Dr Bukola Saraki is fast stepping into his father’s shoes as leader of Kwara politics, the real test of his political savvy has, obviously, only just begun.
What is more, death of the Second Republic Senate Leader may reopen the feud within the Saraki family arising from Gbemisola Saraki’s truncated bid to become the state governor. While the departed Kwara icon reconciled with his son last year, there was still no record of a reconciliation between the brother and sister, with Gbemisola reportedly embittered by the fact that her defeat was engineered by her own brother. Like Bukola, Gbemisola is a tested politician and in-fighting within the family, if it widens, may signal the beginning of the decay of the Saraki dynasty, which is not in any way helped by the widely speculated cold war between Bukola Saraki and his successor, Governor Ahmed.
All other things considered, Kwara may be heading for a political void if the younger Saraki does not act fast and re-oil the engines of the Saraki dynasty. On the other hand, however, change is a permanent feature of politics.
Additional report by Abiodun Awolaja