If I want to be credited with the understatement of the year, I would say that these are not the best of times for Senate President Abubakar Bukola Saraki. But that would be like describing leprosy as advanced ringworm. The former governor of Kwara State who had, until now, succeeded in controlling the direction of Kwara politics as his father did, is confronted with the fight of his life - and the indices are not lining up in his favour! It was unthinkable until the last Eid-el-Kabir prayers that a Saraki would be stoned by an angry army of youths in Ilorin. Saraki was supposed to be their hero. How come they were pelting him and his entourage with rocks and water sachets at the Eid Prayer Grounds? I gathered that it was a totally predictable tragedy. Saraki's protege, Governor Abdulfattah Ahmed, had warned his godfather about the people's anger. He reportedly counselled that there was need to avoid showing up in public until the wave of discontent dissipated. The people believe, rightly or wrongly, that Saraki's hand was in every move their governor made. For the senate president to still strut about as if nothing was amiss was not just insensitive; it was foolish.

Eventually, what did he achieve with the millions he reportedly spent sending sallah gifts to the elite and hiring cheer-mongers to sing his praises? One source said that some youths in Ilorin widely circulated the list of Saraki's assets and the Naira equivalent of his worth. Many of them wondered how one human being could have amassed so much wealth without owning several oil rigs or, perhaps being a major drug baron. They started believing all what they had been told in the formative days of the APC when the national leaders of the party handed over the structures of the party in Kwara State to Saraki, in the process edging out Dele Belgore who had flown the ACN flag against Saraki's former party PDP. Belgore left APC when the party was handed to Saraki. Within and outside the PDP, Saraki has powerful enemies, which is not unusual in Nigerian politics. What is unusual is the tepidly jejune kind of defence he has lined up to explain why he is facing the Code of Conduct Tribunal. His sympathisers have even tried to insult our memory by alleging that President Buhari was involved in Saraki's indictment as a way of avenging Buhari's previous censure by Dr. Olusola Saraki (Bukola's father) in the Second Republic in connection with the missing $2.8 billion oil money saga. How do people turn the truth on its head in this manner?

This writer was an official witness at the Justice Ayo Irikefe Tribunal set up to investigate the missing $2.8 billion. I had been summoned by the tribunal following an interview I had with the NTA on the missing money. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and Dr. Tai Solarin were also summoned. Neither General Obasanjo nor Major-General Buhari were fingered in the revelations. You couldn't say that much for Dr. Olusola Saraki whose name came up several times despite the fact that he was not an official of NNPC. Saraki's sympathisers mean well but they deploy the wrong weapons against the man's traducers. I find it very strange that instead of weaving a believable story around the man's assets, they are busy telling us that he is being persecuted for a crime committed 10 years ago. The question is, *did he commit a crime*? Why not let the tribunal find out and make appropriate pronouncements? Another tract in wide circulation is a statement credited to Alhaji AbdulGaniyu Folorunsho Abdulrazak, described as former Nigerian ambassador to Cote d' Ivoire, to the effect that the Sarakis are not Kwara indigenes but from Abeokuta. Grandfather Muttahiru Saraki had attended Quranic school at Agbaji area of Ilorin, an area reputed for Islamic scholarship. Since then the Sarakis had forsaken their Egba identity and claimed Ilorin as their traditional homestead. There has been a gale of discontent among the 'sons of the soil' who felt that Saraki was a mere carpetbagger harvesting fame and fortune at their own expense. What better time to show that he didn't belong than now when his political fortunes are looking south? And then there are the survivors of the several bank failures linked to the high and mighty in which Saraki's name also features prominently. There are several allegations of how some of his loans were written off. There were also contestations on how other people were made to bite the bullet in place of the grandmaster himself. If I were Saraki, I would learn from the earlier fall of a much more illustrious man, the colourful Chuba Okadigbo who toyed with the forces against him until the day he presided over his own political entombment. If I were Saraki, I would for once acknowledge that discretion is a better part of valour. Reach an agreement with your accuser before he reaches the judge lest you be found guilty and canned. *POPE FRANCIS' MIRACLE* Die hard anti-Obama and prominent ideologue of the far right, Speaker John Boehner, wept all through Pope Francis' address to the US Congress in which the Catholic Pontiff told the truth to power on the environment, race relations, abortion, family values, immigration , etc. "Be sympathetic to immigrants", said the Pope, "for you were all once immigrants yourselves..." The lachrymose Speaker tried all through to stifle the well of emotion from somewhere deep inside. He is the only one who can explain what demons were eating him up. Then the following day, he announced that he would be resigning from his leadership position and quit congress in October. He said he made the decision while praying on Friday morning - a day after hosting Pope Francis at Congress. If that is not a miracle, then tell me what it is.