Editor

— as party knocks Saraki for playing victim’s card

Kwara APC governorship candidate AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq at the weekend embarked on a snap door-to-door mobilisation of voters in the state capital Ilorin, pledging to ensure people’s welfare takes the front seat if he is elected. 

AbdulRazaq had attended a programme organised by one of his support groups in Karatu Alanamu ward in the state capital when he suddenly alighted from his vehicle and began a shop-to-shop mobilisation of voters on the street.

“We appeal to you to vote us and we will never disappoint you. We share your aspirations and frustration and we join you to say O To Ge (enough is enough),” he said, as he exited an automobile kiosk in the sprawling Adabata area of the ancient town. 

The AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq Governorship Campaign Organisation, meanwhile, has called on the Kwara State government to stop its purported bid to pull down the APC billboards, saying however that the O To Ge movement had long been ingrained in the consciousness of the people of the state.

It insisted that the billboards were erected after all legal procedures had been followed and that the excuses by the government that they constituted environmental hazards were mere afterthoughts. 

“We call attention to the fact that this is a state government under the control of Senator Bukola Saraki who shouts ‘democracy is under threat’ each time he or his lackeys are called to account for their conducts.  The only time democracy is being threatened is when his excesses are checked by law enforcement agencies! Democracy is safe and good when his goons go after opposition in Kwara or when he suspends fellow lawmakers who disagree with him,” Rafiu Ajakaye, media aide to the governorship candidate, said in a statement on Saturday. 

The campaign organisation also knocked senator Bukola Saraki for allegedly playing a victim card with his recent press conference in which he accused the police of haunting him and his supporters. 

The statement said a careful look at the political history of Kwara would suggest that Saraki was only crying wolf to draw attention away from the violent nature of his politics from 2003. 

“Kwara State Governor Abdulfattah Ahmed should stop exposing himself to public ridicule. We challenge him to tell his boss Sen Bukola Saraki to first initiate a bill in the Senate to declare all political billboards in the Federal Capital Territory and indeed Nigeria an environmental menace,” the statement added.

Nigerian’s Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari, GCFR, is dead.

Shagari reportedly died at the National Hospital Abuja on Friday after a brief illness.

He died at the age of 93.

His demise was announced on twitter by his grandson, Bello Shagari.

Bello wrote, ”I regret announcing the death of my grandfather, H.E Alhaji Shehu Shagari, who died right now after brief illness at the National hospital, Abuja.”

The development at the IEDPU programme where some louts and street urchins shouting ‘Sai Bukky’ disrupted a community event is disappointing, embarrassing and antithetical to good moral and ethics for which Ilorin community is known. Apart from reminding everyone of the desperation for which the evil status quo in Kwara is known, the sad event clearly points at the extent to which the parasitic gangs will go in the coming months to continue to keep Kwara and its people down.

The disruption of the event just when the Kwara APC governorship candidate AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq was about to give his speech exposed the shenanigans of the urchins and their paymasters whose uninspiring radio programme earlier in the day has drawn the scorn and condemnation of every Kwaran home and abroad. The disruption was probably a damage control for their insulting radio programme.

The intention was to damage the good image of the APC candidate and slow down the tsunami that is already consuming their unproductive political fiefdom in Kwara. But they clearly failed in their evil plot as their thugs — similar to what they did in Offa where their ankara wears betrayed their allegiance — were too crude to conceal the fact that they were on an errand to attack AbdulRazaq and make it look like the fine gentleman was going about with thugs.

Like a cobra fighting for its life, everybody knows that they have since lost the battle of ideas and are unabashedly desperate to wrestle in the mud to survive. It is too late. The people of Kwara are saying ‘Otoge’ — enough is enough.

We will not wrestle with the pigs. We won’t fall for their gutter politics. We are for decent debate, even as we mobilise the people of Kwara to end the years of tyranny and corruption.

Regardless, we wish to state that we are bonafides of not just Ilorin Emirates but Kwara State and we won’t watch while some political merchants who have no real stake in Kwara deploy their sidekicks and thugs to unleash violence on our people. We will ensure that the characters who disrupted the IEDPU for political reasons are arrested and made to face the full weight of the law. We call on the police and other security agencies to be alive to their constitutional duties and bring those characters to book. The development is a red flag and should be nipped in the bud. We believe our security agencies are competent enough to ensure that people who don’t conform to basic ethics of proper behaviour in public space are made to account for their deeds.

The AA Media Team