“The move against Saraki is unpopular. It is working against our party, the APC, and may affect our fortunes in the elections. Also, the case against Saraki is already creating needless tension in the various communities in the state.”
— Hon. Olosa Toyin, Comrade Onimasa Hamzat Ganeey and Hajj Abdulraheem Alabi,
By Taiwo Adisa, PhD
About two weeks ago, I engaged one of the aides of the governor of Kwara State, AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq, in a conversation on the necessity of the planned prosecution of the former Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, and his successor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, for possible involvement in the Offa robbery incident of 2018. The aide was waxing emotional about life and its sanctity, and the fact that no matter how mighty the suspect is, he shouldn’t be excused when loss of life is concerned. Even when I told him that his government’s action may be unable to scale the huddle of mischief-making at this point, and that no matter how much the government tries, the prosecution would outlast it, while no one knows what would come thereafter, he kept parroting the same lines. I had to leave the argument when I recalled that not all politicians would want to heed the Shakespearean admonition and inquest contained in Romeo and Juliet – “Can vengeance be pursued further than death?”
To the politically discerning, the following would plausibly depict the unfolding scenario in Kwara State, and not a few would conclude that patches of the narrative can be easily strewn together. The AbdulRahman and Saraki families have had issues that date back to the times of their patriarchs. The AbdulRahmans were supposed to be the earlier starters in Kwara politics, but they got upstaged by Baba Saraki, Senator Olusola Saraki, the Second Republic Senate Leader, whose son, Bukola, eventually became governor of the state and further entrenched the Saraki political dynasty.
Somehow, in the build-up to the 2019 elections, AbdulRahman rallied the same Kwara people who had followed the Saraki dynasty to produce governors, Senators, Rep members, and House of Assembly members, council chairmen, for decades (indeed since the Second Republic) to upstage the clan with the ‘Oto Ge’ (enough is enough) slogan. Bukola Saraki, who inherited Baba Saraki’s political machine, was seen as the villain as the people voted massively for AbdulRahman. Just a few years on that ‘Oto ge’ lane, the thinking on the streets was that the people did not see the benefits they desired from the new government. So, they became wary, and another slogan, ‘O su wa’ (we are tired), started building up. Though Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq was able to secure his re-election in 2023, the signs of discontent among the people were written all over.
The fact that you can hardly point to visible structures as legacies of the ‘Oto Ge’ government appears more worrying for the people. In the midst of that general apprehension in the Kwara polity, Bukola Saraki again started re-emerging as the rallying point, as many still point to the infrastructure he built as the remaining legacies of government they can see.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, came reports that the government of Kwara State was revisiting the Offa robbery incident with a view to prosecuting Saraki and his successor, Ahmed. The report claimed that the report of the DPP of 2018, which exonerated Saraki and Ahmed, called for further investigations and that the state was ready to prosecute the duo for the alleged crime. Though the government did not provide details of the “fresh evidence,” and how it secured the said evidence, it acknowledged that those indicted by the Department of Public Prosecution (DPP) have been having their days in courts, while the trial court ruled on their matter in 2024, the Court of Appeal ruled on it in January 2026. The Court of Appeal actually upheld the death sentences on five men convicted of the 2018 robbery incident. Recall that the coordinated robbery attacks on Offa, Kwara State, left 33 people dead on April 5, 2018. 12 of the dead were police officers, while one pregnant woman was also killed. It should be incontestable that such a heinous crime is not the one to be dragged into the realm of politics. It is one crime that demands optimal punishment, and the courts are already speaking.
But dragging Saraki and Ahmed’s names into the fray would dilute the extent of it all. Questions are bound to be asked as to what would motivate Saraki, a former governor, a top bank executive, and a player in the business community, to engineer a cheap crime, such as armed robbery. How much will he make from such a venture, and what money can accrue to him from the dastardly act that he did not either inherit from his father or make in the line of his business?
Recall that he was even a sitting President of the Senate at the time of the incident, a man who was made to face a series of prosecutions at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, matters that dragged on to the Supreme Court of the land. To an ordinary eye, the robbery charge would be difficult to contemplate or link to the former Senate President and his successor.
Perhaps to sound a note of caution to the state government, most possibly as a result of the feelers from the streets, some concerned members of the All Progressives Congress(APC) in Kwara State, in an open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, signed by the trio of Hon. Olosa Toyin, Comrade Onimasa Hamzat Ganeey and Hajj Abdulraheem Alabi, urged the president to intervene in the state of affairs of the party in the state and prevent anything that could stop the state chapter from delivering the state to the party. They said: “The move against Saraki is unpopular. It is working against our party, the APC, and may affect our fortunes in the elections. Also, the case against Saraki is already creating needless tension in the various communities in the state.”
Though the trio claimed that Saraki was not a member of the APC, they believed that it would be counterproductive for the APC government to whip up public sentiments in his favour through the said prosecution.
In his response to the statement by the government of Kwara State, Saraki drew attention to the reports of the DPP of 2018, which could not establish any prima facie case against him on the matter. A statement he made public indicated that the DPP had issued two reports and that “following the submission of a second report by the police investigating team to his office on July 27, 2018, the DPP prepared a second legal advice which was dated 23rd August 2018. The three-page legal advice also has only three paragraphs.
“In paragraph 3 (vi), he noted that with regards to the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, since there is no departure from the earlier findings in the interim report, this office is still unable to establish any prima facie case against him for any offences of criminal conspiracy, armed robbery, and culpable homicide punishable with death.”
But the state government had doubled down in its resolve to prosecute Saraki with paid adverts published by different newspapers. In a statement signed by the Commissioner for Communications, Bolanle Olukoya, and dated April 25, 2026, the government claimed it had evidence that the suspects “received operational support from the leader” and that “no responsible government ought to turn a blind eye to the evidence available to it.” Maybe the government was reserving the details of the evidence for the courtrooms because nothing was said about the time the evidence was procured, and why it runs contrary to the two reports of the DPP in 2018. As a layman, I would guess that the courts would be invited to unravel whether some suspects who have gone through the first two stages of trial (High Court and Court of Appeal) and have received the maximum punishment can suddenly dig into their sacks of memory to provide “fresh evidence” in the same matter. We can only wait for the decisions of the court when the processes unfold.
You may wish to recall that, according to the DPP reports of 2018, six people were recommended for prosecution in the robbery saga. They include Ayoade Akinnibosun, Ibikunle Ogunleye, Adeola Ibrahim, Salawudeen Azeez, Niyi Ogundiran, and Michael Adiukwu. Adiukwu, however, died in police custody, leaving the five to face prosecution. The High Court in Ilorin, Kwara State, went through the trial and convicted the five, passing death sentences on them all. The Court of Appeal, also in Ilorin, affirmed the same ruling in January 2026. But for the latest twist by the government of Kwara State, it is expected that the judgment of the apex court of the land would close the case on this sad saga.
While the back and forth between the state government and Saraki was ongoing in the media, not a few Nigerians were worried about the turnout of events in that state and whether, in truth, as the Concerned APC members stated, the state government was already feeling the heat in the kitchen.
On a personal note, I was shocked that a state governor, who has not been seen displaying the emotional touch with the series of reports of killings and kidnappings in his state, would only concern himself with the matter of Saraki and Ahmed, matters that can be easily confused in the realm of politics.
Last week, we heard that no fewer than 25 monarchs have abandoned their palaces in Kwara South as a result of banditry and kidnappings. The government of Kwara State is yet to take a two-by-two advert in the newspaper to commiserate with the displaced monarchs and their communities. Reports in recent times indicated that no fewer than 300 needless deaths have been recorded in parts of Kwara State, while the state government can at best be said to be winking in the dark about possible solutions. Some months ago, suspects who were arrested in Oyo State for attacking the Old Oyo National Park confessed to importing bandits from Kaiama in Kwara State to perpetrate the crime.
So, Kwara State has a base for bandits, and the governor is busy flying agbada here and there in the name of the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. Maybe he can pick some words from a recent interview granted by a seasoned police officer, the former Commissioner of Police in Lagos and Benue States, Fatai Owoseni. Hear the retired CP talk about tackling insecurity: “I believe that every governor has a solution within his domain. It is not the president and the people of the different states who voted for you to be their leader. Whoever is a governor in a state is the president in that state. Whoever is the chairman of the local government is the president in his local government, a commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. So, people must live up to their responsibility. The issue of everybody running to Abuja, it is not the president that will design the security in the states for them…”
