Our attention has been drawn to a statement issued on Monday evening by Kwara State PDP Publicity Secretary Tunde Ashaolu in which he accused Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of pursuing vendetta against the Saraki family. Mr Ashaolu also shamelessly sermonised about good governance — the very term that never existed in the dictionary of his leaders for 16 years. He also spoke so unabashedly about Public Private Partnership under which his masters fleeced the people of Kwara State of their patrimony and almost sold the state until Kwarans revolted.

Firstly, it appears the PDP either does not understand the word vendetta or is just speaking for the sake of it. We wish to remind the PDP cadres that what their leader did in 2003 in Kwara State was the exact definition of vendetta and simple mindedness. Not only did their government hunt down anyone who disagreed with their politics and denied them of their lawful entitlements, they went ahead to abandon all the developmental projects bequeathed by the late Governor Mohammed Lawal at the detriment of the people. It didn’t matter to them that those projects were prosecuted with public funds. All that mattered was the project ‘Kill Mohammed Lawal legacy’. Can the PDP mention one project that Governor AbdulRazaq has abandoned on grounds of vendetta like their leader did? Can the PDP mention one person, just one person, that the Governor has witch-hunted for their political difference?

In what exposed its addiction to impunity and remorseless misappropriation of public resources, the PDP claimed that Governor AbdulRazaq sought to seize Ile Arugbo. While the issue of Ile Arugbo has been addressed robustly by the Kwara State House of Assembly without any logical response or tenable defence from the Sarakis, we wish to state that this administration owes it a duty to the electorate to ensure that nobody gets away with impunity in Kwara again. That is no vendetta. That is stopping impunity in its track. That was the essence of the Otoge movement! Gone are the days when individuals will wake up one morning and appropriate public properties without going through the due process. Isn’t it shameful that the PDP will even raise that issue when they were supposed to cover their head in shame?

As for its advice for the Governor to give good governance, we say that the PDP and its leaders lack any moral stamina to talk about good governance. Today, the whole world is now being treated to what is a semblance of bottomless Abacha loot in Kwara — apparently one of the several shameful legacies of PDP leaders in Kwara State.

Kwarans are not unaware of the fact that most of the so-called projects of their leaders were white elephant projects designed to corner public funds. How does anyone promote agribusiness— export of farm produce or attract meaningful investments — when not a single road from Kwara’s major agricultural areas was fixed? Apart from the cronies of their principals who benefited from the fraudulent reign, which off-taker will prioritise a state without access road to its agric hub over states with better access roads?

Whereas its leaders left a legacy of impassable roads, lack of water, non-conducive school environment and oppressive reign, the last six months of Governor AbdulRazaq have brought visible change to Kwara State across all sectors. Kwarans can now see what it means to implement a budget after nearly two decades of empty budgets that translated to nothing other than mindless looting of public resources.

In just six months, there is hardly any senatorial district in Kwara State today that is not feeling a change of guard in terms of projects and measured response to public yearnings. People can now safely hope that tomorrow will be better — unlike in their own locust years when money voted for projects ended up in private pockets. The mind-boggling pictures of decrepit public facilities — schools, hospitals, water works, libraries, roads, baseball court, museums and other public monuments — bear grim testimony to the inglorious years of the PDP leaders. The Kwara we inherited was without any meaningful infrastructure even when the debt profile left behind will take generations to pay. Yet not a single dime would have been left in the till if the EFCC had not placed a ban on the state accounts to stop the imminent looting of the allocation and tax refunds that were just coming in.

While we urge our government ably led by Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq not to engage in any brickbat with the shameless looters of public treasury, the PDP is on a wild goose chase if it thinks for a second that people will not talk about how much it made nonsense of a state that was on top of the table of everything good in its early days. People will talk and there’s nothing the PDP or its leaders can do about it.

Finally, Governor AbdulRazaq is too preoccupied with the business of restoring the glory of this state. He has no time for any witch-hunt. Were he to be like the Kwara PDP patrons, not a single one of them will be able to walk the streets of Kwara . Such pettiness was the hallmark of their leader in 2003. Kwara won’t go that crude route again. Never again!

Folaranmi Aro
Kwara APC Publicity Secretary
26th November, 2019.