The Kwara North 2023 agenda: grace or greed? – Abdullahi Yakub
The media space has recently been overwhelmed by news of the “KN2023” agenda and anyone in touch with the realities in politics easily understands that it is a cheap plot by either the losers in the 2019 elections or the money bag political theorists who believe that when people share the state Commonwealth that is supposed to be used to build schools, roads, hospitals, drill boreholes and other life touching projects, then the Government is performing but when Government is using the state funds to do the needful for the people, then they’re not carrying people along.
Kwara North has always sought for governorship seat since 1999 to date. In 2011 Baruten produced The Right Honourable minister. He explained during the 2019 campaign how Bukola Saraki had collected money from him with a promise to hand him the ticket which was later handed to Fatai Ahmed. He denied him that ticket and in 2019, did same to Zakari Mohammed. Guess who are the frontrunners of the Kwara North 2023 agenda.
The noise will last till 2023. There’s an army on both sides firmly on their respective opinions. There are however two sides of political leadership in Kwara North; One was retired by the Otogé tsunami to change the status quo of “Oga said” and reckless thievery and oppression. In an attempt to seek relevance back to the political space, they coined the “KN2023” to blackmail the current government. It is not a coincidence that Bukola Saraki is the brain behind this ridiculous noise. The last crop is never desperate for power shift in 2023 but to continue with the current trend of infrastructural and human capital growth, the kind of which never made it to our imagination.
Most saddening is the crop of people he is assembling. Victims of his crashed political empire whose omens have bought them the love and support we gave them. Same former bigwigs of Kwara North politics during Bukola’s era who they accused of preventing them from developing their regions. Little wonder the former minister of transport was unable to use his office to construct a single box culvert or grade any road in the region. There are more Kwara Northerners with common sense and logical reasoning and with sound memories too, this is why the AA train has the majority at the grassroot level, where elections are actually won.
I am a realist and will be straightforward with my assertions.
Lai Mohammed and AA’s misunderstanding has also contributed to this renewed and revived agitation and zeal for power attainment. In other words, if Lai Mohammed and AA still sing the same gospel of political togetherness, if Lai had succeeded in creating his greed-stricken dynasty of a new godfatherism, he wouldn’t have even remembered Kwara North, he wouldn’t have considered it imperative to satisfy the aspiration and heal the marginalization of Kwara North. He’s not a hero of Justice, he’s a hero of mental colonization.
Some Kwara northerners have decided to grab the plastic opportunity, it is not an exhibition of smartness, it is rather the defeat of sanity and consciousness. Empty words and vague speeches were uttered and like a magic, the listeners became gullible.
AA emerged as the governor of the state with the Speaker from the North, well-informed on the might and strength of the detested structure. His emergence was built on a collective goal; to discard imposition and impunity, to promote justice and an all-inclusive growth geared by investment in physical and human capital.
In just two years, the largest school rehabilitation ever in the history of the zone is happening now before our eyes. There’s no Ward without a good number of schools with both new classrooms and rehabilitation, overhaul and renovation. Health facilities across all wards are undergoing renovation. Many have been completed. Every local government in the region has either experienced a construction of asphalt road in major towns or an asphalt overlay on the existing death traps that never caught the attention of the demigods.
There’s no Ward in the zone without a feeder Road graded after decades of deliberate neglect. motorized bore holes are not exempted in this list which replaced rivers and streams as our major source of waters. teachers in both SUBEB and TESCOM categories have been recruited and promotions have been implemented with full financial backing. Civil servants winnowed in abject poverty as a result of unholy denial of their rights. The era of peanuts has been disbanded and this is another crime by AA.
The Otoge revolution was birthed on collective goals; to discard imposition and impunity, to promote justice and an all-inclusive growth geared by investment in physical and human capital and the current strides of AA in the above areas mentioned are not far from the sacred creed of the struggle.
AA’s government is not perfect but its imperfection is better than the havoc and damages of the dark past. To assert that Otoge revolution has washed the sins of the past is not an ordinary illusion but a delusional illusion. The political sinners of the yesteryears are still keen, remorseless and determined to continue their oppression, exploitation and of course, impurity. To opine that they have repented and changed for good is to believe that lions are oviparous. Even if an ocean of rain falls on a leopard, its spots can’t be washed away.
Between an unimaginable calamity and a perceived marginalization, which is less devilish? Marginalization is an angel in the midst of demonic calamities. The zeal to heal our “marginalization” should not inspire us to give our souls to the predators in preachers’ gowns.
Politics is as old as a man but governance is as old as it gets. When the former is in play, undue criticism and cheap propaganda floats in an attempt to downplay the latter.
If anything is to go by, our current state in the zone is a grace being blackmailed by greed and truth will win in the end.