Professor Albert Folorunsho Ogunsola, an associate of the late Second Republic Senate Leader, Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki and one time Chairman of the All Peoples Party (APP) in Kwara State, spoke of his relationship with the strongman of Kwara politics and other sundry matters. Excerpts:

Weekly Trust: As one of the associates of Dr. Olusola Saraki, how did you take his death?

Prof. Albert Ogusola: It was painful; is like losing a part of you. We were very close and our relationship dated back decades. I am one of his closest friends. In 1943 we (himself and I) along with Professor Oluwasanmi in 1943 were running around because he was deeply involved in politics. We went to see Azikiwe, to see Herbert Macaulay. He was a right hand man of Awolowo, but he never showed it and people did not even know that he was playing that role in Awolowo's political life. He was an integral part of my family and I formed part of his. My own children looked up to him, his own children look up to me and the closeness was so much that naturally when he died, it is a question of me losing one of my own. It is not a question of followership, it's a question of me so close to him and we were so inter-relating, discussing family affairs and so on that I felt the loss very much especially when I looked at it again from the point of view that I am 10 years older than he was. From the point of human thinking and so on, I would say I should be the first to go, but God did not want it that way. So, you can now understand my own feeling towards the whole thing.

What will you miss about him?

He was my confidant. It is like somebody asking, ‘your young brother died what have you missed', because where will he start the story for you?

What type of political ideology did Saraki propagated when he was alive?

His political ideology if there was any ideology in the politics at that time, one will say is philanthropy. He knew that he came from an environment where majority of the people were poor and needed sustenance and he was prepared to give his life for it. He would meet them at their point of needs, both male and female, children and so on, sent many children to schools, whose parents he didn't care to know and fed people meals three times in a day anytime he was in town. And he did that from the beginning to the last days of his life. And this worked for him as it turned out later to be the strongest political weapon that he could use to really get people to follow him, because if he could meet their needs as an ordinary citizen, they are bound to have confidence in him that if he should be in a position of power, he would do more for them. He was very helpful to all and sundry which I could testify to; and to that extent he won their hearts. If he should say, “let's go to the left”, they would follow him, “let's go the right”, they would follow him. So, one can say welfarism was his political ideology- welfare of everyone was part of his philosophy or ideology.

Now that Saraki is no more, do you think his son Bukola who is believed to be the leader of the PDP in the state, is capable of stepping into the shoes of his father?

Well, you see politics is such a slippery type of occupation that one can hardly predict whether somebody would be this or that tomorrow. To say that, this man can never be that, that man can never be this in politics, I think that would be naivety. How do you begin to predict what he can do as a human being?

How can Bukola inherit his father's political empire?

Well, you see people talk a lot. I just wonder, because as I said, politics is a very slippery profession. If you say money, alright and so what, if you say you need tact, who says he cannot learn to be tactful within three or four months...so you can't begin to predict. Look at what happened to his father, small mistake about Adamu Attah wanting to have his second term and Saraki said, “no” and Adebayo and Saraki lost his presidential ambition. Would you now say Saraki was a fool?

What is your take on northern politics now especially as it pertains to power rotation?

Well I don't know whether what is happening now as regards power has changed from what it was significantly. You see when Sardauna was alive; we had three regions - northern, western and eastern. The money the north was making was what was used to run this country because of their groundnut pyramids, leather, hides and skin, steel and columbine. Columbine was used for atomic bomb and during the war years, we got plenty of money from that. And the north used the Lagos port which aided them very much in making money. The west had cocoa, the east palm oil, but it was the northern economy that was sustaining the country. Nigeria Railways from Lagos to Kano which has just been resuscitated recently was economically viable because every small station where Nigeria Railway operates became a large town like Kaduna, Kano, Zaria, Jos. They were empty spaces of land when Railway was not there and the places became big towns.There were attempts here and there to disintegrate the country, but it held. We continued with one Nigeria, but people who did not understand that the strength of the north, economic strength of the north was based on the railways from Lagos to Kano decided to dismantle Nigerian Railways so that the economy of the north would cripple. Even the road from Ibadan to Ilorin, for years they refused to make it work so that trucks would not be used in conveying these things that would make northern Nigeria economically strong and then the north, west and the east was broken into pieces (more states) so that the threat that the north constituted but it held because elders were determined to keep Nigeria as one. Now, if you come to look at it, today why are we in this trouble? There are some people who did not know this history about what the north went through before we settled for one Nigeria. There are some people even in the north who want it to break up because of religion. There are people in the west who want the Yoruba kingdom. In fact, yesterday or day before, I read in the paper, the Biafrans claiming their right. These people do not know the implications and the consequences of that, but to answer your question, the North is still very strong politically and will continue to influence decision on how the nation will move.