By Kale Mashood

Yesterday, February 17, I read on the internet an opinion article titled ‘Letter to my Ilorin Elders’, authored by one Abdulraman Salam. He forgot to state at the end of the letter that he is a card-carrying PDP member, a clarification that would have helped the reader contextualise his article. Mr. Salam, to be sure, has been a dogged defender of Kwara State Government and Sarakiism on the social media, Twitter, with handle @abdulramansalam. Since I knew these facts about him, I did not take his article serious, because, as has been his conduct, he cleverly sidestepped salient issues about the topic he was writing about: the legal suit some Ilorin elders filed challenging the alleged sale/lease by the Kwara State Government of the Old Ilorin Yidi (Praying Ground), also known as the Amusement Park.

Also, Mr Salam said he represents the interest of the youths who he contended are happy at the transaction because of its huge economic potentials to provide jobs. He accused the elders of whipping up ethno-religious sentiments to advance certain political cause. And ultimately, he argued that the whole thing is targeted at embarrassing the Saraki family and that the joining of Mrs Toyin Saraki as a defendant in the suit was done in bad faith.

Given Salam’s antecedence on the social media, as I said earlier, I laughed off his article because, as I have also read about the case by the Ilorin Elders, he was not addressing the issues those patriotic elders have raised about the whole transactions. Because of the reading public who understandably may not have read anything about the matter, I resolved to also render a civic duty of highlighting issues I think Salam did not want the public to consider before forming an impression. I will do so without pre-empting whatever ruling the court may enter on the matter.

To begin with, apologists of Sarakis like Mr Salam and Kwara State Government contended that the Ilorin Elders behind the case are being mischievous to join Mrs Saraki in the suit. And I ask, in what capacity are they (the Sarakites) making this conclusion? My elementary knowledge of the judiciary is that a plaintiff has the option of joining as defendant anyone he/she thinks is involved in whatever case he is taking to the court. Whether such prerogative is genuinely applied or not is to be determined exclusively by the trial judge. On this score, the Sarakites got it wrong in saying with so much fiat that the elders were being mischievous in joining Mrs Saraki. For now, neither the Sarakites nor myself know what documents these elders have to link Mrs Saraki with the transaction in contention. Until this becomes clear when the case is heard, anybody saying anyone was maliciously joined is being sentimental.

Those elders are contending that this land is owned by the community (used in the past as a community praying ground and later as a public amusement park, with it being the location of the statute of the Unknown Soldier) and has at no time been acquired by any government. The Sarakites have at no time disputed this claim in their media diatribe. It is also said that this land was originally owned by a family which gave it out to the community for public use – not the government. Now, can government sell/lease out such land without doing the proper things?

Mr Salam said the elders are whipping up religious sentiment? How? By calling it old Yidi Ground? Is it not? And if Ilorin’s main pride is its privilege of having perhaps Africa’s largest collection of renowned Muslim scholars, the most revered of whom had the honour of leading prayers on that ground in question, would any government be honouring their memory by situating on that same ground a gambling business? So, really, why won’t any inheritor of such historical monument be angry that it would be bequeathed to any business concern not to manage as a public monument but to mock the memory of such scholars by gambling there?

Equally important is the fact that the state government has proved so dishonest in its contradictory reactions to the land issue. The initial reaction of the government was downright denial of sale or lease of the land. But when the elders proceeded to court, aside opting to being the mouthpiece of Mrs Saraki who is just a defendant as the government itself, Kwara Information Commissioner, Tunji Moronfoye, revealed for the first time that the land in question has been leased out. Then the elders, in the Guardian of February 12, 2013, raised fresh questions for the government to answer. For me, the most salient of such questions is, since the government has admitted to leasing out the land, whether a lessee is entitled to a certificate of occupancy as the government is allegedly giving to ‘Park and Shop’? I have followed this issue religiously and I am not aware that the government has responded to this all-important poser. And if my experience with Kwara State Government is any guide, it clearly does not have any credible response to the questions by the elders and that, in my opinion, is the crux of the matter.

My friend Salam did not see any contradiction in this clearly dubious transaction. The end does not justify the means. If the means is not right, the end is destroyed.
My friend Salam obviously belongs among those who believe that the Sarakites cannot be wrong. If all of us Kwara youths share this slave mentality then together we are doomed. To be sure, Mr. Salam perhaps was speaking on behalf of his fellow crumb-picking partisan youths – and not the Kwara youths as he claimed. I do not see anything wrong in what the elders have done, neither am I persuaded that they are driven by politics or hatred for the Sarakis. Rather they have taken a bold step to challenge what they deem to be an entrenched culture of impunity in Kwara State, the scale of which is not seen anywhere else in Nigeria.

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