Date: 2015-04-13

Since the reported defection of Senator Gbemisola Saraki from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kwara State, there have been several opinion articles by certain interests in the PDP to malign her and pull her down by all means possible. Quite characteristically, the Chairman of the PDP in Kwara State, Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo has been at the forefront of this media war of against Gbemi Saraki. He hasn't minced words in describing Gbemi Saraki as a 'mole' in the PDP. In an interview with a correspondent of the National Pilot recently, Oyedepo was quoted as saying that the defection of Gbemi was a pointer to the fact that the Saraki Dynasty has not been divided all along!

For all I care, Oyedepo can be forgiven. The forgiveness will stem from the fact that the PDP chair is a known Saraki basher. He is so obsessed with the Sarakis that he is now sounding like a broken bottle. Secondly, Oyedepo, for all intent and purposes, now mirrors leadership failure, and he knows this much. For a man that rose to leadership position with a lot of goodwill as a social critic and political activist, but has now in less than a year lost all his goodwill to greed and incompetence, it is a sad reminder that not all critics are genuine, most of them are mere pawns waiting to perform worst than those they criticise. Such a man should be pitied rather than vilified.

A man under whose watch a hitherto promising party crumbled like a pack of card, under whose watch the PDP became a party of the highest bidder and the Abuja power grabber should be pitied. A man under whose watch some of the PDP's best like Gbemi Saraki, Bilkisu Gambari, Sa'ad Omoiya pull out of the party in protest against leadership failure should be pitied. A man under whose watch the PDP's best eleven like Dele Belgore, Oba Abdulraheem, Bio Ibrahim, Jani Ibrahim Suleiman Ajadi etc lost confidence in their own party and its leadership to the extent that they are now rumoured to be secretly working against their own party is not a man to be envied but pitied. This is why I believe Oyedepo should, instead of gloating in apparent frustration over his failure should rather bury his head in shame for not only blowing up his chanced ascension to leadership but doing exactly opposite what he has all along dubiously preached!

For willingly exercising her right under the law, which guarantees the freedom of associating with any political party of her choice, Gbemi Saraki became a subject of regular paid hatched job. It beggars belief that with all their lousy claims to intelligence and superior political acumen, Oyedepo and his paymasters couldn't detect the 'moles' in their midst until 'it was too' late for them. There is no better description of their incompetence than the self-indicting statement that the Oyedepo-led PDP allowed a 'mole' as big as Gbemi Saraki in its fold for long without detection.

But is Gbemi Saraki really a mole of the APC in the PDP? Answering this question will require a lot of objectivity. At the end, I will leave my readers to ponder and draw their own conclusions.

Sometimes in February 2014, Gbemi Saraki, in the company of the multitude of her supporters, openly declared for the PDP from the ACPN. Like every other person, Gbemi Saraki too was looking for a comfortable political shelter. Having been left in the lurch for four straight years after her defeat in 2011, it was just reasonable that she would find a platform to continue to remain relevant politically. Thus, the choice of the PDP.

But hardly had Gbemi joined the PDP than the barrage of attacks started. In Kwara today, everybody seems to know that there is a wide world of difference between Gbemi and her brother, Bukola Saraki; in terms of attitude, generosity, worldview and relationship with people, Gbemi far towers above her brother. The fact that she even chose the PDP, instead of the more comfortable APC where she and her supporters would get enough political patronage is a pointer to her kind of ideology as a politician.

But instead of maximally making the best use of Gbemi's political connection, deep pocket and intellect, some interest in the PDP, obviously feeling threatened, rolled out the tanks against her. From a well oiled media war, which saw prominent party chiefs granting daily press interview condemning Gbemi's late father and his political ideology to a systematic isolation of Gbemi's teeming supporters, the war was relentless and fierce. It was as if the PDP itself was set up against, not Abdulfatah Ahmed or Bukola Saraki but specifically against Gbemi Saraki. It must have left Gbemi herself bewildered, dejected and disappointed! But being who she is, Gbemi kept her cool, stayed focused while blocking all sorts of distractions that came her way.

Has Oyedepo and his sponsors forgotten so quickly how they ganged up against Gbemi's then widely reported ministerial nomination? Has she so quickly forgotten how Oba Abdulraheem, John Dara, Simoen Ajibola, Suleiman Ajadi, Dele Belgore and Muinah Shagaya stood in the way of Gbemi from becoming a minister, her name having been pencilled for consideration by the Presidency? So, how on earth did they expect such a woman, they all hate to love, to cooperate with them and waste her money on a hopeless venture called Kwara PDP? We can continue to give instances of PDP's well orchestrated plot to edge out Gbemi Saraki from day one without stop. Now that they have succeeded in doing just that, it will be immoral and hypocritical of them to turn back now and accuse her of being a 'mole'.

For Oyedepo and his co-PDP travellers, it is late in the day for them. They can't eat their cake and have it. They should deal with their self-inflicted predicament and shouldn't blame anybody for it. Since Oyedepo believes Gbemi Saraki does not have an electoral value, he should please allow her enjoy a quite stay in her new party without regaling us with insult and foul languages that he is reputed for.

Eventually, the underrating of Gbemi and her political structure has been the PDP's albatross in its bid to wrestle power from the incumbent. And since the APC are populated with seasoned and saner politicians, it was not difficult for them to grab the rare opportunity of a Gbemi defection. Did anybody hear what Gov. Abdulfatah Ahmed said on the radio two days to the election? He said Gbemi Saraki had come into the APC to add value, and value she proudly added in both the two elections that held recently in the state.

So, it is glaring to conclude that the stone that the PDP goons underrated ultimately became the corner stone for the Kwara APC. That is lesson the losers in the PDP will not forget in a hurry.