Before You Vote Saraki As The Senate President.
“Before Bukola Saraki is Coronated as Senate President of the 8th National Assembly": A word of Caution to Career Politicians in the Nigerian Senate... By Dr. Abdullahi Imam Abdullahi, a clinical psychologist from Ilorin, Kwara state....JUNE 4, 2015.
Bukola Saraki has been in the news lately. The fellow I understand wants to be the next President of the Senate and the Chairman of the National Assembly. As a Nigerian and a Senator, he has the right to vie for the office in question. His colleagues in the Senate however have a moral duty to reject him unless of course they are as corrupt and criminally inclined as he is.
Before we go further, I must introduce myself. My names are Abdullahi Imam Abdullahi, a clinical psychologist and a scion of the Imam Fulanis of Ilorin Emirate, Kwara state. I have witnessed first hand Bukola’s maladministration in my state. The tales are too many. I will list just a few. Before I do that, I will also make a detour to write about Bukola’s sordid past long before he became Governor of Kwara state – a gift his daddy gave him before he clocked 41 in 2003. It will become apparent in a little while that Bukola is not cut from any moral fiber.
Bukola Saraki and his immediate younger sister, Gbemisola Saraki have always lived on daddy’s dime. In the mid 1990s, Bukola Saraki and his sister were regular visitors to Criminal Investigation Department at Panti, Yaba, Lagos, over allegations of theft leveled against the two by the Nigerian government under General Sani Abacha. It is a blatant lie by Bukola to claim that former President Goodluck Jonathan set the EFCC after him because he moved a motion on fuel subsidy – Bukola was only trying to be clever by half. We shall come to that later. It was at CID Panti that Bukola Saraki met one of his later sidekicks, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Lanre Jimoh (popularly called Lanre Olopa). ACP Lanre Jimoh was a junior officer during this period and he went out of his way because of his Ilorin kinship to assist Bukola Saraki maneuver the Nigerian police muddle. I am not aware that the case was ever closed. It was more like it was hushed like everything else in Bukola Saraki’s life. In the mid 1990s when this happened, was Abacha also witch hunting Bukola Saraki?
This is what actually happened from our findings at the Kwara Restoration Project. After Bukola Saraki spent countless years trying to be a medical doctor in England, he finally managed to pass the medical exams in 1988. This, after spending a decade in British higher education in the pursuit of a medical degree. In 1989, Bukola did his House job as a medical officer at one of the hospitals in England and moved back to Nigeria to join Société Générale Bank in 1990 as the Vice Chairman representing his father’s interest. Bukola continued what he knows how to do best – spending other peoples’ money. He didn’t care that there were many other stakeholders at Société Générale Bank – Shareholders, Employees and Customers, he dipped his hands into the Bank’s purse voraciously and his little sister Gbemisola partook in the bazaar. When Abacha took over, he was intent on punishing the bank robbers of the day, Bukola Saraki was one of them and thus Bukola became a regular visitor to CID, Panti, Yaba, Lagos.
Abacha’s death saved Bukola from going to jail but Société Générale could not be rescued, when the late Admiral Muhammad Lawal, former Governor of Kwara state, fell out with Dr. Olusola Saraki, the Sarakis liquidated Societe Generale to finance Bukola’s governorship campaign. Since then, Société Générale Bank, Nigeria Limited became history until recently when Bukola in cahoots with some others invested in Heritage Bank through proxies.
When Société Générale became insolvent, a lot of hardworking Nigerian families lost their entire savings and many lost their lives in the process. As a clinical psychologist I know that when we talk about money, we ought to go beyond the paper and look underneath to see the men and women whose lives depend on it. Bukola Saraki and his family stole depositors’ money and in the process destroyed millions of lives in the process. These lives are not mere statistics, they are someone’s son and daughter, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, father, mother, mother in law, father in law etc. and the most prominent amongst these individuals is Austin Jay Jay Okocha who lost a considerable amount of money in Société Générale. Later, as Governor of Kwara state, Bukola sought to bribe Jay Jay Okocha with some type of arrangement at the Kwara Football Academy which he established with Kwara state money but later converted into a private concern. There is more to that deal than the scope of this paper will allow.
When Bukola became Kwara state Governor, he continued in his characteristic corrupt ways. He assumed that the Kwara treasury was an extension of Société Générale and daddy’s magnanimity. He dips his hand into the Kwara treasury at will and disregards government due process. Those who try to stand up against his impunity were dealt with mercilessly. Dr. Hezekiah Bamidele Oyedepo was one of those individuals. After the gentleman couldn’t stomach Bukola’s excesses any longer, he transferred his services to the Federal Government under President Olusegun Obasanjo as a Director in the Federal Ministry of Water Resources. There are countless others who are not so fortunate.
A case in point was when Bukola Saraki, drunk on power slapped Alhaji Saka Isemin, a commissioner under his administration for being more loyal to Bukola Saraki’s own father than to Bukola.
Bukola’s eight years reign as Governor of Kwara state was typified by stealing and the conversion of state properties into his own using cronies such as Kamaldeen Ajibade, the former Kwara state Attorney General and one non Kwara, Yomi Ogunsola. These two individuals more than others within Bukola’s corrupt inner cycle hold many of Kwara’s converted assets.
I will list some of them here; Kwara Cashew Company, Kwara Tourist Kitchen, Patigi Regatta Motel, Kwara Advanced Diagnostic Centre (Now renamed Harmony Advanced Diagnostic Centre), the Shonga Farms was largely financed by Kwara under a very shadowy arrangement. The Kwara mall and countless other state properties were converted by Bukola Saraki.
Now, some of us at the Kwara Restoration Project are not averse to entrepreneurship. In fact, we welcome it. What we are averse to is stealing of government properties and converting same into personal estates. By all means, if Bukola Saraki makes his own money and invests such in Kwara state, we welcome it and we perhaps may even celebrate it. But in this case, we have incontrovertible evidence of Bukola’s daylight robbery of Kwara state. We were fortunate through our contacts at the corporate affairs commission to get certified copies of how these companies were transferred to the two cronies earlier mentioned. We took it upon ourselves to hand these documents to our senior ulamas (Islamic scholars) in Ilorin to act on and call Bukola to order but they sat on it. During the just concluded elections, the opposition PDP got the documents from us and they sought to publish same in the Punch Newspapers but the Punch Editor told them that Bukola had already got a court to give him a spurious injunction restraining all Nigerian media, print, broadcast, etc against publishing any negative article on his person even if they are true. On this issue of converted Kwara state assets, anyone that doubts the veracity of my claims should please make an independent verification from the CAC in Abuja.
Bukola Saraki has also been linked with Arson in Kwara state. Shortly after Bukola left office as Governor of Kwara state and his personality conflict with former President Goodluck Jonathan is simmering over Jonathan’s refusal to honour his side of the bargain for Saraki’s assistance during Jonathan’s 2011 election as President; Bukola panicked when the EFCC began to go over the Kwara state financials between 2003 and 2011. Bukola in cahoots with some of his foot soldiers like Otunba Tunde Morakinyo organized some cult boys to burn the computer office of the Kwara state Ministry of Finance. The cultists who carried out this operation did not cart away anything besides burning down the documents. It is noteworthy that they went with a generator to perpetrate their criminal act. One security guard who was not in the know of things and tried to resist was shot dead. The police commissioner at the time, an elderly gentleman from the eastern part of Nigeria was in the know and perhaps a few others.
It is also important to point out that the heroic security guard that was killed crossed over to the state police command that is directly opposite the scene of the crime and was refused help before taking matters into his own hands. May his soul rest in peace with his Maker. The state police command is literally opposite the Kwara State Ministry of Finance and yet the cultist stayed for over one hour burning and destroying documents in the middle of the night with no official state power confronting them. The police commissioner who went along with this nefarious act was later shot dead by hired assassins on his way to his village during the Christmas of 2012. I do not know whether Bukola was involved but the coincidence was too ominous.
When Bukola Saraki left office physically in 2011 as Kwara Governor, he made sure to install a placeholder in his stead thus guaranteeing him ruling by proxy. Bukola is the only Nigerian politician who is serving an unconstitutional fourth term because AbdulFatah Ahmed is tied to his apron strings and cannot make any independent decision on his own. Directors and permanent secretaries in the Kwara state civil service have been known to route memos to Bukola behind the back of the placeholder AbdulFatah Ahmed. This is a feat that even his godfather, former President Olusegun Obasanjo could not pull off.
In essence therefore, distinguished Senators of the 8th National Assembly, you are advised to stay clear from coronating Bukola Saraki as your Senate President. He does not typify any decent, democratic values. He is greedy, corrupt, self absorbed, violent, autocratic and does not have regard for the basic tenets of African culture and tradition in the way he treats those older than him with disrespect until lately.
The only reason you will elect Bukola Saraki as your President is only if he is just like you men and women who populate the Senate chamber, in which case, you would have found a perfect replica of yourselves.
Dr. Abdullahi Imam Abdullahi is a clinical psychologist and writes from Ilorin, Kwara state....xxx
