Saraki: The visionary on the sixth floor

What is usually mentioned is his privileged background. Reporters of his sojourn so far hardly give an account of his checkered history of challenges and tribulations and how he has emerged from each of them stronger, smiling and smoother. Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, who turned 60 on Monday, Dec. 19, is no doubt privileged from […]

What is usually mentioned is his privileged background. Reporters of his sojourn so far hardly give an account of his checkered history of challenges and tribulations and how he has emerged from each of them stronger, smiling and smoother.

Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, who turned 60 on Monday, Dec. 19, is no doubt privileged from birth. As a secondary school student in Kings College, Lagos, his family owned a bank with international affiliation and his father was one the most influential lawmakers in the country.

However, he has over the years proved to be a higher notch above others like him born with silver spoons in their mouths. He had sustained and surpassed the legacies bestowed on him at birth. He has over the years proved that while his family name helped in his development, he has produced personal brilliance, sheer guts, the courage of convictions, the ability to withstand tribulations, and the ingenious capacity to think outside the box as a way of tackling the challenges that have often been thrown at him.

Unlike children of other aristocrats, Saraki has proved over the years to those who deliberately go out to hurt him because of their disdain for the opportunities that nature had bestowed on him, that when you take him for granted you do so at your peril.

When he emerged as one of the very few among his mates in Kings College that made it to medical college and became a medical doctor, it was because he was brilliant enough to earn good A-level credits at Cheltenham College, London and that he could survive the rigours at the London Hospital Medical College.

After practicing as a medical doctor at the Rush Green Hospital, Essex, he had planned to relocate to the United States and become a specialist doctor before family duty fell on him. The bank which had been the prime investment and pride of his family had been enmeshed in an ownership crisis.

It was a case that jolted the implicit trust his late father, Dr (Oloye) Abubakar Olusola Saraki, usually had in friends. When he won the case, he was happy that Bukola agreed to abandon his career in medicine and returned home to take charge of the bank. 

The younger Saraki again became the standard bearer and upholder when his father’s political group chose to punish treachery and remove the incumbent governor of Kwara State in 2003. It was an election in which the supporters of the incumbent administration deployed all weapons, tricks and tactics in their arsenal. 

He was elected as governor of Kwara which was then a backwater state. The challenge was daunting, discouraging, and depressing. Yet, he remained unfazed. He set his focus on attracting industries, people, investments, and more federal presence into the state.

Thus, his administration invested heavily in infrastructure like undertaking a complete overhaul of the disused airport in the state and partnering with Overland Aviation Company to sustain flights in and out of Ilorin even when the government had to subsidize the operation.

The airport was also equipped with an Aviation Training College to train pilots and the road to the airport was reconstructed and dualised. 

Then, many housing estates named Mandate Housing Estate I to V were constructed to further improve urban renewal and development. A power station was constructed and rural electrification commenced on a large scale to light up the state.

In the health sector, the Harmony Diagnostic Centre became the destination health check Centre serving people across the South West and North Central states. Only one or two private laboratories in Abuja had the array of modern equipment in the Centre. The government also introduced the Community Health Insurance Scheme which enabled the poor access to healthcare.

Public education had a radical reform that ensured not only the quantity content was taken care of but that quality services were provided. Enrollment increased and better-trained teachers were engaged, international assistance was sought in reviewing the curriculum, the continuous training and performance monitoring systems were put in place.

The administration established the Kwara State University, Malete-Ilorin, Kwara Football Academy, and the new School of Nursing to produce world-class professionals for the national and international markets.

During his second term as governor, he became the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), another indication that he was his own man and a political leader in his own right. In his usual way of always bringing improvement to any office he occupied and leaving a legacy of achievement in any place he finds himself, Saraki turned around the NGF from a mere expensive talk-shop centre to a real power bloc, an idea centre, and a development-oriented peer group.

The NGF under him became a think tank through which governors tackled issues like polio eradication, facilitating the establishment of the Sovereign Wealth Fund, initiating state peer review mechanisms, and resolving key national crises like the one following the vacuum created by the failure of ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua to transfer power to his deputy, the Vice President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

As Senate president, though Saraki was hounded, oppressed and repressed by the establishment throughout his four-year tenure, history will record that he changed the laid-back, routine and sedate ways of functioning in the Nigerian Senate.

Without encroaching into the executive territory, the Senate between 2015 and 2019 took the colour of a vigorous, vibrant, forward-looking, creative, responsive, accountable, responsible and engaging institution.

Some of the occurrences, like the attack on the Senate during an ongoing session by thugs believed to have been sponsored by a certain ultra-conservative member who was pro-executive, the invasion of the National Assembly by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS), the simultaneous barricade of the homes of the Senate president and deputy Senate president by policemen one early morning, filing of frivolous cases at the courts all of which he won and many other oppressive measures taken to intimidate, overwhelm, undermine and sabotage the 8th Senate led by Saraki remains unprecedented in Nigeria’s history. 

His post-2019 election attitude in which he quietly wished the winners good luck and decided not to challenge the APC candidates’ victory in court was well noted across the country and by the international community. 

In his party, the PDP, where he had sought the presidential ticket twice unsuccessfully, the leadership sees him as a force that cannot be ignored in rebuilding and refocusing the party for electoral victory.

He is the master strategist, mediator-in-chief, towering, battle-tested general, special envoy, and respected networker within the circle of friends of Nigeria abroad. With these unique angles to his 60 years of existence, Saraki remains the man who continues to win and is unbowed by adversity or setbacks.

Olaniyonu wrote from Abuja