RECENTLY, in a move that recalled the dastardly politics of the First Republic when politicians placed corpses in the backyards of their opponents, Kwara State governor, Mr AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, filed criminal charges against two of his predecessors, ex-Senate President Bukola Saraki and ex-Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed, over the April 5, 2018 Offa robbery incident during which daredevil armed robbers killed 30 persons. In 2019, the incident provided the then-presidency, which had been against Saraki’s emergence as Senate President in 2015, with political ammunition. President Muhammadu Buhari hated Saraki’s guts and wanted him out by any means—remember the DSS invasion of the NASS and the coup at the Code of Conduct Tribunal—but it was all an exercise in futility.

Before another sentence, let me tell a little story, as a relation of an ex-IGP related it to me in Akure, Ondo State. The said police boss, alarmed by the ruckus that the friction between the President and the Senate President was creating in the polity, approached a topmost Emir to mediate between the duo. Well, the royal father did but Mr President reportedly stuck to his guns, fuming with rage and declaring that his problem was not Saraki per se but the spectacle of a PDP man serving as Deputy Senate President in his administration! Saraki’s traducers successfully used the Offa robbery against him during the 2019 polls.

AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, the character who is now accusing Saraki, Ahmed and two others of criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide in connection with the 2018 incident, knows too well that the Department of Public Prosecution (DPP) issued a legal advice on June 22, 2018 and August 23, 2018 exonerating Saraki. He knows that the second report by the DPP concluded that “with regard to the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, since there is no departure from the earlier findings in the interim report, this office is still unable to establish any prima facie case against him for any offences of criminal conspiracy, armed robbery, and culpable homicide punishable with death.”But he wants to keep the ex-Number Three man busy, so he (Saraki) doesn’t have ample time to rally his political forces for the 2027 polls in the state. He wants to dent Saraki’s image by recreating the “O to ge” drama of 2019.

Yet, long before the O to ge charade, Saraki himself, as Kwara governor, had actually moved against the dynastification of his family in the Kwara Government House. In 2010, I was on a media team with which Gbemisola Saraki, a sibling of the then governor who was the choice of their father, the kingmaker of Kwara politics, Dr Olusola Saraki, for the 2011 governorship, toured Kwara State. We visited the old man and he was unequivocal about his choice. Among other places, we visited Kaiama. As a prominent Yoruba leader later told me during an interview, the friction between the then-governor and his father was extremely serious. If Bukola Saraki had not moved against the idea of his younger sister succeeding him as governor, Senator Gbemisola Saraki would have succeeded him as governor. That’s a fact.

I am not Bukola Saraki’s publicist, but there’s been no Senate President after him. I have already related on this page how the Saraki-led 8th Senate passed key bills, but President Buhari declined assent to them. As I said, Buhari sent only two executive bills to the legislature in Saraki’s four years, the worst by any president since 1999. These were the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill and the National Minimum Wage Bill. He withdrew what would have been the third, the Money Laundering Prevention and Prohibition Act (amendment) Bill, following the in-fighting between his Attorney General and the then EFCC chairman. Yet, while serially disobeying court orders, the Daura Deceiver rated Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara “very low on patriotism”!

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The Yoruba say there’s something more shameful than theft, but the Kwara governor is apparently shameless. He is leaving leprosy to treat ringworm. Now, Mr AbdulRazaq, if Saraki and Ahmed are robbers, then what are you?? Kwara is virtually collapsing under you. Under your watch, Yoruba communities, among other communities, are being reduced to rubble by Fulani terrorists. Kwara is now a state known more for vicious onslaughts by terrorists than for developmental strides. The video of the Eruku terrorist attack on a CAC church has gone round the world. There have been countless mindless attacks and killings ever since. And yet, your main concern is to blight Saraki? I shudder to think that your hatred for Saraki outweighs your love for Kwara State. Mr Governor, who governs you? What school did you attend and what books do you read? Have you ever heard of something called politics without bitterness?

If you accuse Saraki of a political plot, I won’t even say a word. But to call an ex-Senate President—and a two-term governor to boot– an armed robber is depraved. It is vile. I don’t know what codeine you depraved rulers take once you get to power. You regularly sell us out, causing the leaders of smaller nations to pour filth on us. Look at William Ruto of Kenya saying that if a Nigerian spoke English, an interpreter would be needed to understand him. Do you blame him? The English spoken in Nigeria, like in every ESL environment, is, in the words of Chinua Achebe, a new English still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings. You cannot then blame users for fragmenting and reassembling it without apology, like Soyinka once urged. I do not know if Ayo Banjo et al’s New Englishes: A West African Perspective and S.T Babatunde et al’s Contemporary English Usage: An Introductory Survey (Unilorin) are still in print. They are some of the best materials on the subject. But what does Ruto know?

I detest useless leaders. Does Abdulrazaq think that Nigerians are dunces? If in his bolekaja, janjaweed politics, he doesn’t care about the image of the state he governs, what about Nigeria’s image? Are we supposed to tolerate just any kind of filth because someone smuggled himself into power? Mr AbdulRazaq, how dare you accuse your immediate past predecessors of armed robbery?

The reason these shameless charlatans in power behave anyhow is that no one holds them accountable. How can you accuse your political opponents of involvement in armed robbery just because you sense that election is around the corner? How would Mr AbdulRazaq feel if someone called him a robbery kingpin after office? Indeed, does AbdulRazaq intend to win the 2027 election by maligning Saraki? Is there another Ile Arugbo marked for demolition? Why is he not approaching 2027 on the strength of your performance in office? Why lose all sense of decorum? Why play ping-pong with Offa people’s pain?

Governor AbdulRahman, you can never erase Dr Olusola Saraki’s legacy in Kwara State.