By Nimi Princewill.
A week ago, the media was agog with the cheering news of Kwara being treated to a fair share of President Muhammadu Buhari’s ministerial slots, as the state was rewarded with two nominees for ousting the President’s most loathed foe, Abubakar Bukola Saraki, the immediate past Senate President.
Nonetheless, the President’s kind gesture is understood to have tasted a little sour, at least, by the assessment of Kwara APC, over his choice of Senator Gbemisola Saraki, if word on the street is anything to go by.
Adding gas to fire, some aggrieved members of the Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, fastened on the aegis of the “Kwara APC Caucus”, issued a press statement shortly after Gbemi’s inclusion in the 43-man ministerial list went viral.
The caucus, lamented how her nomination (being a sibling of the former Senate President) was a road back to the “nightmarish Saraki dynasty” which according to further assertions by the group, crippled the state for 16 years.
The statement by the state “APC Caucus” was hurriedly dismissed by pundits who described the group as ‘faceless’ and their remarks, not a reflection of the party nor its stakeholders.
Gbemisola Saraki was eventually screened by the Senate but was surprisingly accompanied by two former senators from Lagos and Niger States — both outsiders, with no known chieftain of the Kwara All Progressives Congress in sight.
However, the final tranche of unscreened ministerial nominees appeared at the floor of the Senate yesterday, with the immediate past Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed staunchly accompanied by the Kwara State Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, a former federal lawmaker, Moshoood Mustapha and other renowned party leaders from Kwara State.
It remains uncertain the true opinion of party bigwigs which lay at the underbelly of Kwara APC, although, Governor Abdulrazaq’s body language may have revealed a glimpse of the party’s disapproval of President Muhammadu Buhari’s choice of Ms. Saraki as Kwara ministerial nominee.