Former Vice-Chancellor of the University of  Ilorin and aspirant for PDP governorship ticket in Kwara State, Professor  Shuaibu Oba Abdulraheem has said that it was an illusion for any member of the family of the former  Senate Leader in the Second Republic, the late Senator Olusola Saraki to still lay claim to control of the Kwara electorate. The aspirant, who last Monday, resigned his appointment as Chairman Federal Character Commission, submitted that the grip of the late Saraki on Kwara State politics died with him. The aspirant justified the sack of 49 lecturers of the University of Ilorin while he was the Vice-Chancellor as he claimed that it was in the best interest of the institution.

He spoke with newsmen at the PDP national secretariat, shortly after picking his Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms for the Kwara governorship race. Daily Sun was there:

Why I am in the race 

I have decided to join the race on the platform of the PDP in Kwara State, principally to join and support Mr. President in the Transformation Agenda. Also, I joined in order to do my quota to the best of my ability and bring the dividends of democracy to my people, I want  to do all things that are righteous, dignified; to bring people out of squalor, poverty, ignorance and disease and show that good governance does not need to be expensive, it is only bad governance that is expensive. We want to be able to demonstrate that to the people.

Eclipse of Saraki dynasty

The Saraki name was when the owner of that name, the revered Waziri of Ilorin was alive, but even before his departure, his supposed inheritors decided and have been acting in manners that have rubbished that name.

We agonise over the desecration of that name but we are saying to the world that that influence which is perceived belonged only to yesterday and it has been buried with the man who owned the name.

Whoever pretends to be using that name now is only doing so to deceive the people. The original and genuine people of Kwara State have decided to part ways with the inheritors and have decided to find and pursue a destiny of our own: free of opposition, free of rancour, free of politics of money bags. We have decided to take our destiny into our own hands which happens to be the believe of the people.

Why we sacked 49 lecturers

Progressive minds are forward looking; it is only negative minds that look on the errors of the past. If 49 persons were sacrificed to bring 4,900 into the full employment, have we done wrong? What we did as at the time was to sanitize the system. All Nigerians are witness to what University of Ilorin is today. It  is adjudged the best university in Nigeria. It is the only university in Nigeria that hasn’t  gone on strike since 2011, it is the only university in Nigeria that four- year course is four years unless the student fails, the only university where everybody wants to go because some people had to make sacrifice including the 49 for today to be what it is today.

Sometimes you need to destroy to build; if 49 are the casualties, it is worthwhile…. So, we are still in the same square and they are back into the university and they are supporting their colleagues in the university to build the university to what it is today. So, if they thought the way you are thinking, Nigeria will not be what it is.

Zoning, threat to unity

Kwara belongs to all Kwarans, it is only detractors that call us south or west when it comes to politics of division but genuine, committed indigenes of Kwara know that in the present dispensation, we are faced with a special challenge of imposters, impersonators, and oppressors which knows no difference between the north and the south in the manner in which they are stealing and robbing the state.

If we must drive out a clique, we must forget about what divides you and think of only what unites. If we are forgetting about zoning now, it is because of the peculiarity of the adversaries that we face and it will only be a foolish person that will underrate the might of the opposition in this matter, therefore we must make available for the contest, the most potent, the most acceptable instrument the PDP can offer and that is why I believe, given what we have done in PDP so far, we are the right person to unseat and drive away opposition from Kwara  politics.