Where is he?  What is Oloye doing now?  Has the Kingmaker of Kwara politics retired (or been retired) from politics?

It is the 79th birthday anniversary of the Waziri of Ilorin, Dr Abubakar Olusola Saraki (aka Oloye), but he is far away in Los Angeles, United States, on medical vacation.

Oloye is not in town but his teeming supporters and party faithful will mark his birthday with a special prayer at his Ilorin residence and a tennis tournament at  the State stadium( Lawn tennis is Oloye's sporting love of life)

Has Oloye quit politics? No. The Grandmaster has said severally that since the welfare of the People is the reason for his involvement in politics, he will die a conscientious politician.

So, Oloye has not retired, and he has not been retired.  He is just taking a deserved break from gruelling campaigns that had been his life for the past 47 years. Nigeria may only have seen the last of this great statesman on a campaign stump.

In the 2011 elections, Oloye fielded his daughter, Senator Gbemisola Rukayat  Saraki(GRS) as gubernatorial candidate under the platform of a hitherto unknown political party, the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN). Interestingly ACPN was not newly formed, it was the joker Oloye was going to use had his son Governor, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki (ABS) been denied a second-term ticket in 2007 by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Oloye wanted Gbemi to succeed his brother to continue the latter's globally-acknowledged good work in Kwara.  The old fox sensed a road block for her in PDP and pronto, he unveiled the ACPN – three months to the 2011 election.

Oloye suspended his medical treatment abroad to launch a blistering campaign for ACPN.  The election came and Gbemi lost. The gruelling campaign and the outcome apparently took a heavy toll on the health of Oloye and he wasted no time in returning abroad for proper medical treatment.

Oloye may have disappeared from the national radar but he is not far away from his people.  He has been home at least thrice since the elections to the warm embrace of the people. Indeed, the reception he got at the praying ground during the last eid-el-Kabir festival in Ilorin was unprecedented.  Oloye was back- literally and politically.

Oloye was also fairly active on the international scene.  He took Spain by storm during the celebrity wedding of his second son, Laolu Saraki, last summer. He followed up with a great outing- with a large Nigerian contingent he sponsored in tow- in Ghana during the wedding ceremony of the son of his bosom friend and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan last spring.

Was Oloye defeated at the last election? I had a ring-side view during that election but that is a story for another day.  Suffice to say that head or tail, the Saraki dynasty was poised to win that election, and it won.

It has been suggested, cruelly, that the Saraki  vs Saraki  face-off in the 2011 election was contrived. It was not. Oloye wanted GRS to win, believing strongly that it was the best thing for Kwara.  But ABS was smart, he took control of the PDP structure long solidified by Oloye,  campaigned vigorously on Oloye's theme of service to the people and even went on campaign stump decked (as were the then PDP candidate and now governor of the state,  Alhaji   Abdulfatah Ahmed, and other PDP leaders) in campaign dresses embroidered with Oloye .

The opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN)- with only one out of 16 Local governments in its kitty- exploited the crack in the Saraki Political family to try to make an in-road into Kwara.  The dynasty was bruised but it survived. And due largely to Oloye's large-heartedness and ABS' post-election reconciliatory moves, political order has returned to the state. The reconciliation, sealed in London, and consolidated in Ilorin, undermines the opposition's hope of a better showing in the future elections.

Welcome to the new tripod Kwara.   Waziri, the Quintessential Godfather, sits atop.  He is the mother hen, ever so protective, ever so concerned about "my people" (the masses); I was struck by the singular request he made to Governor Ahmed during the talks in London last June.  "Bukola has done very well, you must do even better and please, spread development projects across the State," he had charged the governor.  Gov. Ahmed (aka Maigida) nodded; he had got the inspiration he needed.

With Oloye physically out of the scene, ABS has taken charge of political affairs in the state. He is now fondly called leader.  I once told him the insinuation that he had usurped Oloye's leadership.  He promptly dismissed the charge as "petty" and affirmed Oloye's undisputable leadership.  He had told me: "Look, if I go out now, our people will shout Sai Maigida, Sai Bukky, Sai Oloye." And truly that is the new slogan in Kwara. PDP's slogan in the state ends with Oloye.

To his credit, ABS has kept the party faithful on the line, the former governor runs the party and that gives Maigida space to run the government without political distractions.

Maigida completes the tripod.  Oloye jokes that Maigida has supplanted ABS as his son.  Waziri makes it very clear that he was not opposed to Maigida becoming governor.  In fact, at the London talks and the follow-up special prayer session in Ilorin, the Waziri prayed passionately for the success of the Ahmed administration.

In the meantime, it's Happy 79th birthday to our living legend, Saraki Oloye.

Adedoyin wrote from Ilorin.