In Kwara, the opening battle, of post-Otoge wars, has flared on the necromancy front.

On Ile Arugbo (old people’s home), the Sarakis have pitched the formidable memory of Oloye, the late but well loved Dr. Olusola Saraki, against the executive integrity of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq.

It is a classic sight of the dead, not staying dumb, taking pot shots at the living!

Crave the potency of political necromancy, which Ripples, in an earlier piece (13 March 2018), defined as “the devastating politics of the dead, for the deadly benefits of the living”?

Look no farther than Peter Obi, he of the (in)famous China stats, former Anambra governor and running mate to Atiku Abubakar, in their failed run for the presidency in 2019.

Governor Obi, en route to enthroning Obiano as successor would, protégée in tow, do numberless sorties to the Nnewi tomb of Eze Igbo Gburugburu, Emeka Ojukwu, the late Ikemba.

In the very living business of Peter and Willy, the dead Ikemba was the spark: to power the very serious business of Obiano succeeding Obi. No less crucial was APGA, of which the mighty Ikemba was revered spiritual leader.

As it turned out, Ojukwu is dead and gone. Obi and Obiano are done and dusted. APGA, for Obi, is dead as dodo. The dead, of course, stay dumb. So long for political necromancy!

Not so in Kwara. But to be fair, you can’t blame the Sarakis for starting the fray, even if they are guilty as charged, for charging in from the necromancy front.

In December 2019, the Kwara government had announced the reactivation of a long-truncated plan to build, for the state, a befitting government secretariat. It even outed with its model, pretty, modern and impressive.

The snag, though, was that the land, on which the new public service edifice would stand, was the same land, housing the spiritual — if symbolic — soul of the Sarakis’ prime private interests, which feeds a doting and sympathetic rabble.

That was “crossing the red line”, to use the exact words of Bukola Saraki, former Senate president and prime family scion, charging in hopping mad, like an enraged bull, after a red rag; hoisting the Saraki family standard, in high combat, to save family honour. Enter, the Ile Arugbo debacle!

Saraki the Son raved and railed, roared and foamed, growled and swore: he would unhorse the governor yet, for hiding behind state duties to settle ancient scores, between the Sarakis and the AbdulRasaqs, simply because he had fleeting gubernatorial powers.

The rabble, both the Ilorin street battalion and the elite media corps, got the hint and rallied with a flourish — injury to the Oloye is injury to all!

By carefully framing what the government claimed was sound public policy, as rabid Saraki-AbdulRasaq family squabble, Saraki the Son tapped into the lethal emotional stream of Saraki the Father. The old Oloye army got stoutly and proudly roused!

Rise o Kwara! Post-Otoge wars are here, with an opening proxy campaign, blistering and savage, in memory of the late Oloye!

It couldn’t get more explosive: Saraki the Son, acclaimed master of subterfuge, in the high capital of political mesu jamba (local lingo for high-wire intrigue), angling to get back on the Kwara high hustle, after the Otoge routing of 2019!

Why, Gbemisola, Saraki the Daughter, no political friend of big brother, and current minister of the Federal Republic, weighed in, in fond memory of doting father — and with good reasons!

It was on account of Saraki the Daughter, that Saraki the Son, defanged Saraki the Father; in the most ruthless political parricide in Nigerian history — or even regicide, if you regard the Saraki political court as a palladium of democratic feudalism.

The closest, if far less messy perhaps, was the case of Samuel Goomsu Ikoku, who defeated his own father, Alvan, in the 1957 regional poll, for a seat in the Eastern Region House of Assembly.

Indeed, the political trinity of Saraki the Father, Saraki the Son, and Saraki the Daughter, is rather gripping.

Read Also: Abdulrahman apologises to Kwara govt

At the zenith of their Kwara hegemony, the patriarch happened on the hubris — no: not a few swear it was solemn promise from a doting dad to an adorable daughter — that Saraki the Daughter would succeed Saraki the Son, in a conservative state none was sure was ready for a female governor; but which only the beloved Oloye could swing.

The Son picked the most accurate signal, and stonewalled the Father, in painful democratic regicide, lest the dynasty come crashing down, on account of paterfamilias hubris.

But that high moral didn’t stop the Son and outgoing governor, from succeeding the Daughter and outgoing senator — chauvinist-powered hypocrisy, if there was one!

Still, as new master of Kwara politics, Saraki the Son, in no time morphed into a feudal Rehoboam, from the feudal Solomon his father was. He scorched his “subjects” with scorpion, from the loving whips of the revered Oloye.

That outside resent, coupled with intra-family feuding, oozing from a humiliated father and grudging daughter, laid the foundation for the Otoge electoral rout of 2019, after eight long years of incubation.

Before that crash, however, the subversive love of feudal giving might have birthed a sense of (im)moral entitlement, that made little demarcation between public wealth and private trove.

That must have birthed the Ile Arugbo, pat in the middle of a parcel of land, long earmarked for the Kwara Secretariat.

The Sarakis, flaunting a document, claimed that public land was private property fair and square. But the government countered the document was incomplete and the transaction inchoate; since there was, from government records, no evidence of payment and legal transfer.

The court was to settle the debacle, until one of the parties sued for out-of-court settlement. But even at that last meeting, the Saraki side didn’t show up. They only sent in a letter, requesting a fresh date.

Meanwhile, in the pre-court season of high-octane bluff and bluster, Brother and Sister Sarakis insisted no one — repeat, no one: not even a “power-drunk” governor — could undo their father, the Oloye’s “legacy”.

But what legacy? The democratic feudal feeding of the rabble, which the stark and irreverent Ayo Fayose had unmasked as “stomach infrastructure”, in his best forgotten second romp at power, in neighbouring Ekiti State?

On Ile Arugbo, the court would decide who blinks. But whoever wins, that battle is only the opener of the blistering wars to come, for the soul of Kwara, in the post-Otoge years.

The Sarakis’ odyssey is well cut out. But it appears not many would lose any sleep, should they get further cooked. Their rabid appeal to base emotion, over Ile Arugbo, is hardly a winning formula, against a Kwara government that appears anchored on solid public policy.

But the bell hardly tolls for them. Rather, it does for the AbdulRasaq government, that by the Ile Arugbo campaign, appears opening a new and exciting vista for equal-opportunity access, from the subversive feudal generosity of the Saraki hegemonic years.

It is condemned to delivering on its enchanting mandate.

By Olakunle Abimbola