By Onilemarun Abdulkareem
There are many things that can be said about Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State, but none quite as fitting as the fact that he fights like a man who enjoys it. Not the kind of fight you find on campaign grounds or election day o, but the kind that outlives its usefulness and outgrows its purpose.
And so, when a video emerged yesterday showing an open confrontation, complete with shoves, flaring tempers and red eyes, between the Governor and Hon. Mashood Mustapha at the Bayero family compound in Ilorin, I blinked not. To me, it was just another episode in the never-ending political battle that has become AbdulRahman’s preferred style of governance.
For six years and counting, this Governor has fought nearly every man who once lifted him into power, and has not spared even the institutions that gave his mandate legitimacy. When they say “Otoge” swept Kwara in 2019, they forget to mention that the very broom has since turned inwards, sweeping away even former friends and allies.
The first casualty was Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the former Minister of Information, who famously had the tough job of selling AbdulRahman’s candidacy, a tough sell at the time, considering the array of more popular, more acceptable, more credentialled, and definitely more responsible aspirants. Lai delivered him against the odds. Today, the old man regrets the day he got that tough job.
Then came the Saraki family, longtime custodians of Kwara’s political firmament. It wasn’t enough that AbdulRahman defeated them in the elections, he went on to demolish even the symbol of their father’s ensuring political and philanthropic refuge for the aged, Ile Arugbo. It was the political equivalent of shooting a man, then going back to slap his portrait.
He moved next to the very engine room of the Otoge movement – Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, the movement’s philosopher-king, and Hon. Saheed Popoola, one of its most visible voices. In more saner climes, they would be heroes of the government they created (even if fraudulently). In AbdulRahman’s book, they became expendable characters who refused to bend the knee.
Hon. Bashir Bolarinwa, the erswhile APC chairman in the state, was discarded for refusing to act like a political houseboy. Prof. Shuaib Oba AbdulRaheem, a respected academic and one of Kwara’s finest public servants, was not spared. Neither was Lukman Mustapha, a political force in his own right. Even Dr. Yahaya Oloriegbe, a loyal foot soldier and one-time Senator, eventually found himself on the wrong side of AbdulRahman’s political table.
The list keeps growing. And now, the more recent targets are Senator Saliu Mustapha, and Hon. Mashood Mustapha, two very powerful political figures in Ilorin Emirate. With Saliu, the Governor appears uncomfortable with the Senator’s rising national profile and grassroots acceptance, while with MM, the Governor’s disdain turned physical, right there in public, in front of the cameras.
But there are even more subtle ones. Observers say the Governor is walking a silent tightrope with the Emir of Ilorin himself. While the monarch maintains a facade of tolerance, insiders whisper that the old man is only enduring the Governor’s high-handedness, a survival tactic in the face of raw executive power.
Outside the state, AbdulRahman is said to be at odds with his fellow Governors, particularly in the Nigerian Governors Forum, where his leadership, or lack of it, has allegedly drawn cold shoulders and collective sighs. Pray, who would return someone as uninspiring and aloof as Gomina Ramani to continue as the Chairman of a serious forum like the NGF?
Yet, the Governor’s war is not limited to political gladiators, he fights the people too. He fights them through policies that stifle businesses, excessive taxation, and what many describe as a war on the poor. He’s shut down spaces of commerce, turned off taps of livelihood, and gone after young media practitioners using police powers as weapons.
In six years, the Governor has turned the fine art of governance into a series of personalised political brawls. His playbook is simple: You’re either with him or you don’t exist. With each passing year, a new enemy is made. One begins to wonder if the Governor gets up each morning asking, “Who am I fighting today?”
And he’s a fighter to finish. He doesn’t reconcile, he obliterates. Six years in, Omo yerimisa is still swinging, sometimes at real foes, but mostly at shadows, for in the theatre of AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq’s politics, there’s always another war to fight, and never a moment to govern.
