Sahara Reporters Stop The Blackmail: Saraki Remodeled The Education Sector In Kwara


By Taofeek Sanusi



It is no more a story that Sahara Reporters is contracted by some APC greedy politicians like Tinubu and his stalwarts; to relentlessly soil image of the distinguished President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki with baseless lies. The assertion above is again corroborated with the news it ventilated yesterday on social media captioned "IRONY: @bukolasaraki attends his son's graduation from a university in the UK, this was the students' hostel at Kwarapoly 2007 when he was Governor" To garnish its lie, it shopped a picture purported to be a hostel of Kwara State Polytechnic in 2007 with a picture of Dr. Bukola Saraki and his son, Seni, who few days ago graduated from London School of Economics.



This strategy of calumny was crafted to further vilify or defame Saraki's personality. To me, this could be described as a paper-weight; because Saraki left many positive indelible marks on the face of education while he was governor of Kwara State (2003-2011) which Kwarans will forever appreciate. The picture of the hostel showed by Sahara Reporters did not match any of the hostels on Kwara State Polytechnic campus as at 2007 and many people ( Kwarans and non-Kwarans) who were there as students around that year have negated the claim with their debunking responses to the World Best Liar Sahara Reporters.



However, I don't need to be reiterating all these to Yele Sowore, the blatant lie manufacturer, because it is what all Kwarans already know; but to let other millions of Nigerians who may not have had opportunity of visiting Kwara State ascertain that Saraki never toyed with "Education" while he was governor of Kwara State, let alone other sectors.



It is an indisputable fact that Saraki's achievements in education remain unprecedented. During his administration, our state-owned tertiary institutions and some public primary and secondary schools wore a new look as they were strategically renovated and supplied with more school facilities. At the basic level of education, Kwara State was one of the leading states credited with effective implementation of Universal Basic Education Programme, courtesy of the then Kwara State Commissioner for Education, now All Progressives Congress (APC) Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi. Also, Saraki's administration was committed to prompt provision of scholarships and bursary awards to the students as a way of supporting and motivating Kwaran students home and abroad. Have all also forgotten how he managed the menace of cultism in our tertiary institutions by employing the special security intelligence officer called Segun Ogidan who used his special power to arrest the cultists that were at the limelight in administrations before?



Furthermore, as a man who always opines that education is the most veritable tool for socio-economic development of any society, Saraki built a WORLD CLASS LIBRARY in furtherance of the stimulation scholarship spirit in Kwaran youths. In addition, his administration took a giant stride to give us state-owned university in the State of Harmony, that is KWARA STATE UNIVERSITY (KWASU), THE UNIVERSITY FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT with world class blocks HOSTEL, the institution which is leading among the state-owned universities in Nigeria in terms of educational facilities, courses run and the likes.



Furthermore, Saraki's son graduation from a London School of Economics should not be used as another avenue to blackmail him as he is not the first politician in Nigeria to sponsor his child abroad for schooling. At this juncture, I want to emphatically inform Sahara Reporters that Saraki is a man of inestimable value in Kwara State and no matter the mellifluousness of your lies against him, Nigerians would not consume them because they are already feeling his significance to the national development.

One would definitely marvel why the same Sahara Reporters was muted last year when two of President Buhari's children graduated last year from a UK University and when Tinubu's daughter and children of hundreds Nigeria's top politicians also graduated abroad.

The joy however is, the public are getting to know more that Sahara Reporters was sponsored to pull Saraki down with his day-to-day libels and slanders.