Date: 2014-12-05

I am writing this letter to you with a heavy heart and deep sense of sorrow. I am particularly saddened that I have to make this letter open due largely to the fact that I have not had the privilege of a direct audience with you, inspite of my several efforts. However, I hope you will give this missive in respect of the seemingly unending crises that now threaten the unity and cohesion of the PDP in Kwara State, the utmost attention it deserves.

I have the utmost regard for you because I see you as a young man, who has tapped into the wealth and influence of his mother to carve a niche for himself in the corporate world. Even at a period when your obviously zero contribution to your constituencies came under heavy attack, I stood my ground among your critics, by insisting that yours was a misguided beginning that is going to be rectified in due course. But recent events within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State, particularly the intractable crises that have engulfed it due largely to your mother's desperation to install you as the PDP candidate for the Ilorin West/Asa Federal Constituency has no doubt put a question mark on your character content and your sense of justice and fairness as a youth.

Ever since you were drafted into the murky waters of politics by your mother, Hajia Bola Shagaya mid this year, the fortunes of PDP in Kwara State has continued to nosedive; the party has been cascading from one crisis to another, a situation which was climaxed by the unwholesome assault on the crew of Channels Television by thugs widely reported to have been sponsored by your mother, the Minister of National Planning, Dr. Suleiman Abubakar and their political adviser, Alhaji Oba Ajara.

If you search your conscience very truthfully, you will realise that before now, the PDP had been a united family of some of Kwara's finest politicians bonded by their collective resolve to break the state from the yoke of socio-political slavery and dehumanisation by its present administrators. From Kwara North to South and Central, the stakeholders had firmly held themselves together, in spite of their differences, to the consternation of the ruling party. But that, unfortunately, is now in the past. No thanks to the desperation of your mother to brazenly impose you on the party at all cost against popular wishes!

After a painstaking but dispassionate appraisal of the crises that have so far rocked the Kwara PDP in recent times, I have come to realise sadly that the root of the very many crises rocking the party points to the direction of  your ill-advised ambition. First, it was a factional leadership tussle that almost tore the PDP apart in Ilorin West Local Government chapter of the party. Next up was the inconclusive congress in some wards of Ilorin West LGA due to your mother's refusal to play by the rules of the party. And by plausible implications, the daylight doctoring of the list of delegates from Asa and Ilorin West LGA, by your all-powerful mother in connivance with some Abuja cabals, with a view to tilting the votes fraudulently in your favour.

Not done, and in furtherance of your mother's desperation to have you installed, a full blown war was declared against the media in Kwara State with the unprovoked assault on the crew of Channels TV on Saturday, 29th November, 2014 by thugs reportedly sponsored by cronies of your mother on fellow party members, including Mr. Mashood Alaka, the Political Adviser to Prof. Oba Abdulraheem, a respected chieftain of the PDP in Kwara State. The only known 'offence' of Channels TV crew was their decision to cover the illegal parallel congress being carried on by a combined team of Hajia Shagaya, the Minister of National Planning and Alhaji Oba Ajara.

All the foregoing only points to one thing, your ambition is overheating the polity and destabilising the peace of Kwara PDP. Sadly, it does appear to me that you don't give a damn if the house come crashing on us all, as long as you secure the ticket to the National Assembly.

Atypical of a good mother, Mrs Shagaya is leaving no stone unturned to help you realise your ambition but the way she is going about it leaves sour taste in the mouth. Every action of your mother has been reduced to your ambition alone. Getting into the House of Representatives is not supposed to engender such recurrent crises. Even bigger aspirations are not causing as much crises as yours seems to be causing at the moment.

My dear brother, I know you might have been misled into believing that the widespread opposition to your ambition is a result of the overbearing attitude of your mother or your almost zero contribution to the socio-economic development of your community over the last few years despite your stupendous wealth, but these may only be the remote causes of the public anger against you and your mother.   If you care to know, the main reason why major stakeholders in the party are opposed to your aspiration is the need to do justice between Ilorin West and Asa Local Government Areas, the two LGAs that make up your constituency.

If you are a good student of history, you will observe that since the birth of the current democratic dispensation in 1999, Ilorin West LGA has had an almost exclusive hold on the Ilorin West/Asa Federal Constituency seat at the House of Representatives at the detriment of Asa,their sister LGA. Right from Hon. Gbemisola Saraki (1999 - 2003) to Hon. Nimota Suleiman (2007 - 2011) and now to Hon. Moshood Mustapha (2011 - 2015), individuals from Ilorin West LGA have been on that coveted seat for an upward of 12years while Asa LGA has been denied such representation, even though there are countless indigenes of the local government that eminently qualify for the position.

If you are actually a believer of freedom, like the PDP is currently chanting in the state, you should also know that there is no freedom without justice. The principle of equity, fairness and justice demands that the seat goes to Asa LGA this time. This is the only way that the Asa people, who have for so long been relegated to political oblivion, could be fairly carried along in the scheme of things. Or, is Asa no longer part of Kwara? Are they not deserving of equal political opportunity like their Ilorin West counterpart?

For your information, even the All Progressives Congress (APC), as undemocratic as they are, has felt this injustice against the people of Asa and has (s)elected Hon. Razaq Atunwa, who hails from Efue to be the flagbearer of their party, for the 2015 House of Representatives contest.

I implore you to give a moment thought to the import of my letter and take immediate steps to prevail on your mother to thread softly over your ambition. You need to look her in the face and tell her that her desperation has only created more enemies than friends for your aspiration. Getting into the National Assembly should not be on the platform of injustice. 

Though you may be privileged and not feel the impact of what your mother is doing, you should consider the future of Kwarans, whose lives will be further impoverished by another four years of APC stranglehold on the state.

The PDP primary into Federal Houses of Assembly is just around the corner and you are already listed as a candidate. What happens that day will make or mar your political future. If such monumental violence was orchestrated in the build-up to your primary election, what then will happen on Saturday, 6th December, 2014 when you are expected to face the electorates? Is your mother ready to submit you to a free and fair contest with other aspirants like you? Are you ready to play by the rule this time? What will be the fate of innocent party members in the hands of political thugs loyal to your mother? What will be the fate of the media men who will be on their legitimate assignment? I hope you will put a halt to further blood-letting during the exercise and beyond? The earlier you yield to this warning, the better for everyone in Kwara PDP, remember politics should not be a do or die affair.

My dear brother, you are still a youngman and will get even bigger and better opportunity to serve your people only if you don't ruin such opportunity or tarnish your image now! A word, they say, is enough for the wise!

Until then, I wish you the very best in life.

Bello Bature writes from Ilorin