By Chuks Akunna

Last week, Dr. Bukola Saraki, against all odds, outsmarted leaders of his party, All Progressives’ Congress (APC), to emerge President of the Senate and chairman of the 8th National Assembly. With his new position, Saraki made history by becoming the first Nigerian family to produce two principal officers in the National Assembly.
In 1979, his father, the late Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki, was elected Senate Leader. Oloye, as the elder Saraki was fondly called, is touted the most influential Senate Leader of all time.

Oloye’s political oddysey began in1977, when as a young medical doctor, he was elected into the Constituent Assembly. Fourteen years earlier,  just back from Ivory Coast, now Cote d’Ivoire, Saraki forayed into politics running for a councillorship seat in Ilorin. He suffered a nail-biting defeat. Several years later, the Constituent Assembly was to shape Saraki’s political career. It was at the Constituent Assembly that Oloye met the likes of Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Dr. Joseph Wayas who later became President and President of the Senate respectively.

Saraki was one of the few politicians who believed in the maxim “charity begins at home.”
When in 1978, the military lifted the ban on politics, he, alongside millionnaires like Alhaji Haliru Dantoro and Alhaji Ado Ibrahim, current regents of Borgu and Ebiralaand respectively, convened the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in Kwara State. The trioka nursed ambitions to govern Kwara State. However, apparently sensing the governorship contest would be a tough one, Saraki drafted Alhaji Adamu Attah, a retired federal permanent secretary and Ibrahim’s kinsman, as the NPN governorship candidate. Expectedly, Adamu Attah won the election, becoming the first civilian governor of Kwara State.

On his part, Oloye secured a seat in the Senate leaving out Dantoro and Ibrahim. In the Senate Oloye was elected Majority Leader. In no time, Saraki’s charisma, charm and generosity won him several friends across Nigeria.

By 1983, relations between Senate Leader and Governor Attah had so degenerated that Saraki began shopping for a replacement. He found one in a colleague, Senator Cornelius Adebayo, of the opposition Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN).
With Saraki’s support Adebayo, in October 1983 emerged governor. His tenure- and that of all politicians at the time- was cut short by the military coup of December 1983.

Eleven years later, Saraki bounced back when his candidate, Alhaji Sha’abba Lafiagi became governor of Kwara State on the platform of the now defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP). This was a time several Second Republic colleagues of Oloye had become political relics. However, following another military coup in November 1993, Lafiagi and his coleague-governors were sent packing.

Like the proverbial cat with nine lives, Saraki, in 1999, rose from the ashes of two military coups to yet again instal Mohammed Lawal, a retired Rear Admiral, governor of Kwara State. Saraki also installed his daughter Gbemisola as member of the House of Representatives. In addition, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed Oloye’s son, Bukola, Special Assistant. Hardly had Lawal settled down as governor than stories that he and Saraki were at daggers drawn began flying. By 2003, it had become crystal clear that Saraki and Lawal had parted ways. With irreconcilable differences mounting, Oloye and his army of supporters pulled out of All Peoples Party (APP), leaving the scabbard for Governor Lawal.

On the eve of the 2003 elections, Oloye and his army of supporters joined Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Apparently to put his political strength to the test, Saraki fielded his son, Bukola, and daughter, Gbemisola, as governorship and senatorial candidates respectively. Both candidates won, making the Sarakis the first fNigerian family to simultaneously produce a governor and a senator.

In 2006, Saraki, with a few politicians in the North launched Northern Union (NU), a pressure group that launched a fierce campaign for power shift to the north. Their efforts paid off in 2007 when President Obasanjo handed over to Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Saraki’s NU played a very prominent role in the Yar’Adua administration and produced at least two ministers. His son, Bukola, was considered one of the most powerful governors of the Yar’Adua presidency.

In 2011, with Bukola’s tenure tailing out, his father, in yet another political experiment to become the first Nigerian family to produce two governors, moved to have his daughter Gbemisola succeed her brother. Bukola felt his commissioner for finance Abdulfatah Ahmed should take the slot. A bitter family fued ensued, forcing the elder Saraki and daughter to move to Allied Congress Party of Nigeria  (ACPN). Some have argued that the family feud may have been a a diversionary tactic by the Sarakis to produce Ahmed with the least resistance. Ahmed became governor while Bukola Saraki “retired” to the Senate.

On 14 November, 2012, his father Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki lost a long battle with cancer.  He was aged 79.
With Oloye’s passage and the ascendancy of President Goodluck Jonathan, bookmakers had written Bukola Saraki off as a spent political force.

From 2010, when Jonathan emerged president following the death of President Yar’Adua, Saraki, who even though was in PDP, had spent the better part of his tenure as senator trying to stave off attempts by anti-graft agencies to nail him.
In November 2013, Saraki alongside his protégé, Governor Ahmed, and four other PDP-elected governors, made one of the most audacious political moves in Nigerian political history. They pulled out of PDP, the president’s party. Many consider Saraki the architect of the mass defection. The belief is reinforced by the fact that another protégé of the Sarakis, Abubakar Baraje, announced the defection first to “new PDP”, before berthing in APC.

With the APC victory in the 2015 general elections, many had expected Saraki to play a key role in the new government, particularly having sacrificed so much and contributing to APC’s success. His ambition to become Senate President, therefore, came as little surprise. But with time it became clear that certain APC leaders, particularly those who came from the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) , had other ideas. They felt Yobe-born Senator Ahmad Lawan was a better candidate. What these APC leaders, led by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, failed to realize was that they were up against the Sarakis, veterans of political warfare.

No doubt, Saraki has worsted his political rivals in APC. It, however, may not yet be Uhuru for the new President of the Senate, as the Lawan-cum Tinubu camp has vowed not to sheathe their swords. Some governors from the north are also reportedly not amused by Saraki’s emergence as that would make him the highest ranking politician in the north after President Muhammadu Buhari. The situation isn’t helped by the ballooning anxiety that Buhari might be too old to seek re-election in 2019.

For close to four decades, the Sarakis have been politically relevant, not just in Kwara State, but nationally. No family has come close to such feat. With the exception of Oloye, all the players in the First and Second Republics have suffered what some call political burnout. By 2019, the Saraki political machine would be 40 years old.
The big question on the lips of many is what next should the world expect from Bukola, the time-tested scion of this Saraki political dynasty?