APC's Kwara Central Senatorial District candidate tells electorate to reject Saraki because he does not have Islamic values

ALL Progressive Congress (APC) Kwara Central Senatorial District candidate Dr Ibrahim Oloriegbe has called on the electorate to reject his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rival Senator Bukola Saraki because he does not uphold Islamic values.

On February 16, Nigeria will hold presidential and National Assembly polls and Senator the current senate president will be looking to defend his seat. Elected as an APC lawmaker in 2015, Senator Saraki has since defected the PDP and Dr Oloriegbe is hoping to unseat him when the two go to the polls.

Addressing party supporters recently, Dr Oloriegbe said Senator Saraki does not share the Islamic values of his people and hence should not be returned to the senate. He boasted that he would defeat the senate president and end his political dynasty in Kwara State adding that the people are tired of Senator Saraki and his hold over the state.

Dr Oloriegbe added: “In the past 16 years, our society has been in the grip of people who do not share our common values and heritage. They are dealers whose concerns are at variance with the people’s aspirations and they are leaders with an inordinate appetite for wealth acquisition.

“They are political voyagers and power merchants who don’t share our Islamic values and culture of leadership. Our communities and indeed, Kwara State have been poorly represented at the federal level and this poor representation and advocacy have deprived us of legitimate human, fiscal, economic and developmental entitlements."

He expressed confidence in defeating Senator Saraki given that the senate president’s sister, Gbemisola Saraki, supports his aspiration and the fact that he has the full support of the Kwara State chapter of the APC. However, Yusuph Olaniyonu, Senator Saraki's spokesman, dismissed the threat, describing Dr Oloriegbe as a seasonal politician.

Mr Olaniyonu said the candidate does not have the full support of the APC as he claimed. In addition, he dismissed the APC candidate as a joker, who, he claimed, addressed the press to distract Senator Saraki from his leadership of the PDP campaign to unseat the APC federal administration.

“Dr Ibrahim Oloriegbe is not a candidate in the senatorial election. Rather, he is the candidate of a faction in the APC, the Bolarinwa faction, which the court, in a subsisting and unchallenged judgement, rejected and rather, recognised the Balogun-Fulani faction.

“Oloriegbe belongs to a group of people known in Kwara State as seasonal or visiting politicians. The people do not see them, they don’t relate with the people and they don’t help the people and their community until six months to the election when they move in noxious money and they start printing posters," Mr Olaniyonu added.

Dr Oloriegbe, a medical graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria was the majority leader of the Kwara State House of Assembly between 1999 and 2003. He contested for the senate as an Action Congress of Nigeria candidate in 2011 against Senator Saraki who was then the incumbent governor.

Mr Olaniyonu added: “They have done this every election period. His present noise, as well as that of Abdulrahman Abdulrasaq, Lai Mohammed and the rest, is not different from what they have been doing since 2003 and the result will also not be different.

“If he, like others, has the sole agenda to destroy that dynasty without promising the people any developmental agenda, then, he has failed. He never promised the people anything good or developmental in nature, they only target Saraki. That bring him down syndrome, empty envy, petty jealousy is un-Islamic and contradictory to the true values of an Ilorin man.”

After his failed senate bid, Dr Oloriegbe was appointed as the national programme manager for the Working to Improve Nutrition in Northern Nigeria (Winnn) project. Winnn was a six year project that ran between 2011 and 2017 funded by the UK's Department for International Development at a cost of £50m, which supported Zamfara, Jigawa, Katsina, Kebbi and Yobe states, that have some of the worst growth stunting rates in Nigeria.