PDP Replies Presidency, Says Buhari Ill-Equipped For Governance

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has responded to the attack
launched at it by the Presidency on Thursday, where it suggested
that the main opposition party was the greatest obstacle to
Nigeria’s development, with the PDP saying now that President
Muhammadu Buhari was ill-equipped for governance.

In a statement issued in Abuja on Friday by Kola Ologbondiyan,
its National Publicity Secretary, the PDP noted that the
vituperation by the presidency “in desperate defence of the
fizzling All Progressives Congress (APC)” was a further
confirmation that the APC has become comatose.

It said the presidency response to an earlier statement by the
PDP further showed that President Buhari has abandoned governance
“to engage in threnody for his dysfunctional APC.”

The PDP added: “Our party also notes that a reading of the
reaction from the Presidency further strengthens the fact that the
Buhari’s administration has become uncoordinated and ill-equipped
for governance.

“The statement also portrays a Presidency lacking in confidence
that its party, the APC, can still perform its roles.

“The Buhari Presidency ought to have known that it is too late
in the day for concealments or gagging of Nigerians as its
failures, incompetence and lack of confidence in itself and the APC
are manifest at all turns.

“Moreover, the Presidency should know that the PDP, as a party
that resonates with Nigerians and on which our democracy and
national cohesion is anchored, has a solemn duty to hold President
Buhari and his APC accountable for their misrule which has brought
untold poverty, hunger, violence, bloodletting and division in the
land.

“The PDP has the responsibility to hold President Buhari and the
APC accountable for the promises they made to Nigerians in 2015,
which remain unfulfilled as they were only used by the APC as
carrots to grab power and sit in oppression over our people.

“Now that the Presidency has abandoned governance to speak for
the dying APC, we charge it to place President Buhari on the seat
to, in addition to the failures of his administration, also take
responsibility for the woes of the APC.

“In doing this, the PDP charges Mr. President to explain how he
and his party wrecked our economy from one of the fastest growing
in the world to a shameful world poverty capital in a space of four
years and brought so much hopelessness that compatriots now resort
to suicide, infanticide, human trafficking and slavery mission
abroad for survival. The answer is incompetence and dishonesty!

“The Buhari Presidency and APC should explain why they have been
pursuing polices that threaten the unity, stability and national
cohesion of our dear nation; policies and body language that
promote division, violence, abuse of human rights, violation of
rule of law, attack on tenets and institutions of democracy. The
answer is intolerance, power drunkenness and narrow-mindedness!

“The Buhari Presidency and the APC should explain why they
relish in inflicting hardship, stimulating high costs and
unemployment in the land through exclusionism, harsh taxes and
increased tariffs, while failing to recover the over N15 trillion
stolen by APC leaders, including the N9 trillion exposed by the
leaked NNPC memo, funds which are meant for the welfare of
Nigerians. The answer is insensitivity, selfishness and ingrained
corruption in the APC and the Buhari administration

“The fact remains that the atrocities of the APC stare it in the
face and Nigerians, including President Buhari, know that the APC
is not in the card for 2023.”

Recall that a statement by presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu,
on Thursday, had told the PDP that it has no business discussing
“the love lust” between President Muhammadu Buhari and his
governing APC.

While telling the PDP to focus on its problems, the presidency
described the party as the obstacle to the push for change in the
country.

The presidency had stated: “As the People’s Democratic Party,
the country’s main opposition party grapples with deeply troubling
questions about its terminal decline and future in national
politics, Nigerians must be surprised reading a statement issued by
them, assuming the role of Spokesmen for “President Muhammadu
Buhari.

What business do they have talking about alleged love lost
between President Buhari and the APC? What do they know? Who sent
them?

“Today, the PDP represents the single biggest obstacle to good
governance and change that the country needs and the people are
yearning for.

“Both self-respect and sound political judgement demand that the
Party takes an introspective look at itself after two successive
defeats in national elections, asking what went wrong and how to
fix its battered image.

“They need to go back to the people, in towns and villages, to
know what the people want and what the country needs. Instead of
doing that, they are taking roles for themselves that are not
mandated by law, morality or political gamesmanship.

“What business do they have issuing a statement on the love or
the lack of it between the President and his party? This is not why
they lost elections. The party needs a reboot that aligns with
current national mood and aspirations, to focus on their grim
future after two successive defeats. It is the issue they need to
focus on if they are to be taken as a serious opposition party
again.

“A tough task awaits anyone leading a party with nothing to
offer to contemporary Nigerians but corruption, misgovernance and
division.

“As for the APC, the geographical expansion of the party is
nothing short of a testimony to the rosy future that lies ahead.
The party has come to stay, and the President and the country will
ensure that this is achieved.”

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Ile-Arugbo: Beyond the Politics of Saraki-Abdulrazaq
Feuds in Kwara
By Yushau A. Shuaib

Since his election as governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman
AbdulRazaq has endeared himself to the people by his unassuming
disposition, gender equality initiatives, developmental programmes
and the prompt payment of the remuneration of workers.

In fact, in October 2019, Kwara ranked third on the list of
states that had attracted huge foreign investments, recording an
accumulated inflow of $1.14 billion. It was next to Lagos and
Abuja.

It was therefore surprising that the gender-friendly and
youth-centric administration of Governor AbdulRazaq would commit a
public relations blunder within a year of its first tenure by
destroying Ile-Arugbo, a popular charity home for the aged
(particularly old women) established by late Abubakar Olusola
Saraki, the father of the former governor of the State and Senate
president, Bukola Saraki.

The compound of the home had served as a constituency office
where old and young beneficiaries converged to receive relief
materials, financial support and health care services, as part of
the philanthropy of the late politician’s family.

The government should have considered several factors before
taking such a delicate decision in an environment riven by mutual
suspicion and political sentiments that could easily revive the
alleged old rivalry between the major patriarchs in the power elite
of the Ilorin Emirate, including the Belgores, Gambaris, Akanbis,
Oniyangis, Gobiris, Sarakis and AbdulRazaqs.

There is no denying the fact that the AbdulRazaq and Saraki
families have huge influence in Kwara because of their very rich
credentials and huge contributions to the development of the State.
Nevertheless, there has been a seemingly strained, no love lost,
relationship between the two families, reputed to have been passed
down by their patriarchs, Alhaji AbdulGaniyu Folorunso (AGF)
AbdulRazaq, an iconic legal luminary and the late Dr. Oloye Olusola
Saraki, a renown political juggernaut in his days.

Born on November 13, 1927 in Onitsha, Anambra State, Alhaji
A.G.F. AbdulRazaq is a Pan-Nigerian who attended secondary school
in Buguma, Rivers State, obtained a law degree from the University
of Ibadan, Oyo State and established his law firm in Zaria, Kaduna
State. In fact, he was the first legal practitioner in Northern
Nigeria, who subsequently became appointed as national legal
adviser of the Northern People’s Congress.

Meanwhile, Dr. Olusola Abubakar Saraki was born on May 17, 1933
in Ilorin and attended Eko Boys High School, Lagos, before
proceeding to University of London, and St George’s Hospital
Medical School, London, for his medical training. On his return to
Nigeria, he worked as a medical officer at the Lagos General
Hospital and the Creek Hospital.

Apart from serving as Nigeria’s Ambassador to Cote D’Ivoire and
a Member of Parliament in the Northern Regional House of Assembly,
the senior AbdulRazaq was equally Minister in charge of the railway
in the First Republic, and the first Commissioner for Finance in
Kwara State. He also established the first private secondary school
in Kwara State, Ilorin College (now Government High School,
Ilorin), which provided affordable education for the children
within the immediate and surrounding communities.

Although the senior Saraki failed in the 1964 parliamentary
election for Ilorin as an independent candidate, he was
nevertheless elected a senator in 1979, and became the Senate
Leader. He was re-elected into the Senate in 1983, before the
military took over political power shortly afterward. Subsequently,
the elder Saraki set up a bakery and other ventures for empowering
people in the state

Alhaji AbdulRazaq, who holds the traditional title of Mutawali
of Ilorin, has groomed young people who became successful
administrators and businessmen. He is also blessed with children
that have excelled in different fields of endeavours, notable among
who are the immediate past Chief Finance Officer of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mallam Isiaka AbdulRazaq;
Senator Khairat Gwadabe; Barrister Alimi AbdulRazaq; Hajiya Aisha
Lawal; and the current governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq.

On his own part, elder Saraki, who held the traditional title of
Wazirin Ilorin, was instrumental to the elections of many of the
former governors of Kwara State, including Adamu Attah in 1979;
Cornelius Adebayo in 1983; Shaba Lafiaji, 1992; Mohammed Alabi
Lawal, 1999; and his son, Bukola Saraki in 2003. His daughter,
Gbemisola Rukayat Saraki was also elected as a member of the House
of Representative in 1999 and a Senator in 2003, while his son
emerged Senate President in June 9, 2015.

The rivalry between the two powerful Kwara families manifested
in an interview granted by Alhaji AbdulRazaq to TheNEWS magazine in
2010, where he claimed that the Saraki family was not from Ilorin.
The distinguished diplomat then said that Dr. Olusola Saraki’s
father, the late Alhaji Muttahiru Saraki, who was a businessman
across West Africa, had informed him about their ancestry during a
discussion.

In Alhaji AbdulRazaq’s recollection: “He (Alhaji Muttahiru
Saraki) asked me where I come from. I told him I am from Ilorin.
Alhaji Saraki said he was an Egba man from Abeokuta. By this time,
I did not even know the existence of Olusola Saraki. So, the man
told me he was from Abeokuta, but he went to a Quranic School in
Ilorin at Agbaji, an area reputed for Islamic scholarship. The man
with his own mouth told me he was an Egba man from Abeokuta, not an
Ilorin man. This was in early 1963.”

Alhaji AbdulRazaq also disclosed that Alhaji Muttahiru Saraki
had later introduced his son, Olusola Saraki, to him, at a time
when he was studying Medicine in London. He recollected that at
their first meeting, as the younger Saraki had stretched out his
hand to shake him, but his father slapped him instead. However, he
managed to calm the elder Saraki down. After the meeting, the
father informed him that he was putting the younger Saraki in his
care, stressing that he should, “Take care of him for me.”

Meanwhile, the families have always been on opposing sides of
the political spectrum, contesting against each other in elections
for decades. In 1979 Alhaji AbdulRazaq contested the gubernatorial
election under the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP), while
Saraki sponsored Adamu Attah under the National Party of Nigeria
(NPN); also, in 1999, Dr. Alimi Abdulrazak contested for the Kwara
governorship under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) against the
Saraki sponsored retired Admiral Mohammed Lawal of the All People’s
Party (APP).

In 2003, Bukola Saraki contested for governorship of Kwara State
under the PDP, against AbdulRazak’s in-law, Mohammed Lawal; and in
2011 AbdulRahman AbdulRazak constested under the Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC) against the Bukola Saraki sponsored Fatai
Ahmed of PDP. Later in 2015 AbdulRahman AbdulRazak contested for
the Senate under the PDP against Bukola Saraki of the All
Progressives Congress (APC).

It was only in the year 2019 that Sarakis were defeated as the
AbdulRazaq family won all the seats they sponsored and supported
under APC, including that of AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as governor,
against Saraki’s sponsored candidate, Razak Atunwa of the PDP. In
fact, it was the year that all the candidates sponsored by Bukola
Saraki were defeated woefully at various levels of election.

Meanwhile, since the interview of the patriarch of the
AbdulRazaq family about a decade ago, neither Dr. Olusola Saraki
nor his children responded or showed any sign of the rivalry
between the two families, until after the demolition of
Ile-Arugbo.

In a statement he signed, Senator Bukola Saraki described the
revocation of the family’s land as ‘the height of vengeance’
against his father, adding that quite unfortunately, Governor
Abdulrahman had been attacking his father’s legacies from the
moment he came to power.

“This action is clearly a manifestation of vengeance … in his
narrow-mindedness, the governor believes his victory at the polls
is an empowerment, entitlement and enablement to settle scores,
provoke and pursue inter-family rivalry… His open antagonism
against my late father and his legacies is unwarranted and will not
be tolerated,” he said.

Speaking in the same vein, the Minister of State for
Transportation, Senator Gbemisola Saraki accused Governor
AbdulRahman of using security agencies to settle old generational
family political scores in what she described as an ‘unwarranted
assault on her late father’s heritage.’

While stating that that “revenge cannot be a policy thrust of
governance,” she rounded off by saying that, “We must stand up
against vindictive politics, driven by envy, motivated by jealousy
and practised without integrity.”

My take in this family feud is that both patriarchs had been
pathfinders, pacesetters and philanthropists who not only inspired
and motivated younger generations to excel in their different
endeavours, they had also provided employment opportunities,
scholarships and financial support to their people.

In this regard, therefore, the children of these distinguished
patriarchs and families should sheathe their swords and embrace
dialogue to enable mutual understanding, tolerance and peaceful
coexistence.

Kwara State should not be turned to a battlefield through
heightened tension, like a state in Nigeria where due to a slight
misunderstanding, the leader of a religious sect was shot and
arrested, his properties destroyed, while his family members and
followers were equally killed and nothing happened because of the
powerful position of the aggressors in the polity.

Yushau A. Shuaib
Author, An Encounter with the Spymaster
yashuaib@yahoo.com