Philanthropy runs deep in the Saraki family.

Its patriarch, himself the Oloye, Dr Abubakar Olusola Saraki, was a legendary giver. You always knew when he was in his country home in Ilorin GRA, to take a break from his endless trips abroad in search of new deals, to nourish and consolidate old business, or to undergo medical treatment.

Large crowds would gather on the precincts of the expansive villa – old men, old women, young men, young women, pregnant women, women carrying their babies on their backs, children, people in all sorts and conditions of distress, some of them from the crack of dawn – waiting for the man they reverentially called Oloye to emerge from the innards, hold court, and hand out gifts with his accustomed generosity.

They would go home with all manner of gifts – cash, food parcels, painkillers, and fabrics. Those familiar with this routine said no one ever left empty-handed or sorely disappointed.

The next day the crowds would gather again, and the next, until Oloye left town to attend to his sprawling business interests across the globe.

This philanthropy was the root of Saraki's phenomenal success as vote harvester and political king-maker in Kwara State. If you agreed to his terms, he endorsed you for whatever office you were seeking, even if you did not belong in the same political party. And at election time, he delivered far more votes than you needed for victory.

The formula failed him only once, when he tried to make his daughter Senator Gbemisola Saraki governor, just as his son Bukola was completing his second term on the job and had positioned himself to succeed the sister, aforementioned, in the Senate.

To be fair to Bukola Saraki, he had stated for the record that it would be "immoral" for his sister to succeed him as governor. Still, it would be hard to praise him for high-mindedness. For, it was immoral for his sister to succeed him as state governor, what made it moral for him to succeed her as Senator representing Kwara Central?

In the end, it was not morality that settled the matter. Oloye Saraki's deeply conservative base, Ilorin Emirate, was simply not ready for a woman governor, even if that woman was his daughter. Her candidature never got off the ground. The philanthropy did not flag. But this time, the votes were just not there for the harvesting.

His failing health deteriorated, and he died without enthroning another king, and without knowing for sure whether what happened to his daughter's governorship bid was merely a setback or the end of his hegemonic hold on Ilorin politics.

It may well be, as some detractors have been saying in light of the collapse of the family's Société General Bank and with regard to some other financial transactions under investigation, that much of what was fuelling Oloye Saraki's philanthropy was OPM – Other People's Money.

Even if this is indeed the case, we must still give him high praise. For, how many of the tens of thousands of Nigerians living the good life on OPM ever think of giving back anything, much less giving back on such a large and sustained scale as the Oloye?

Senator Saraki has been carrying on in the tradition of his father, handing out gifts to the less privileged, especially during Muslim festivals. But in his hands, what used to be an orderly occasion, festive even, has turned not merely riotous but positively lethal. Not once, not twice, but three times now have such occasions degenerated into primal stampedes in which dozens were trampled to death or suffered grave injuries.

Last week, 20 persons were reported to have died in the stampede for a piece of the Sallah gifts the Senator was handing out at his residence in Ilorin. At least as many persons were injured or fainted.

This macabre spectacle was a reprise of a similar occurrence on May 27, 2011. By one estimate, no fewer than 10 persons died in Ilorin in the stampede for rice and other items Dr Saraki was distributing at Mandate House, his campaign headquarters.

In November 2010, at least 11 persons had lost their lives in similar circumstances. The state government had swung quickly into a damage-control mode and put the number of fatalities at four. But that is still four persons too many, for an occasion designed to provide succour to those in distress.

Senator Saraki has rightly suspended all such events and issued a message of condolence to the relations of the dead and the injured. But that is cold comfort. He should not embark on another philanthropic outing until he has devised fail-safe measures to ensure that those who gather to receive gifts do not end up trampled to death or maimed.

There is no doubt that he means well and cares deeply. Despite his solicitude and that of others who are ever so willing to give out of their abundance, we shall always have the distressed with us. His challenge is to find a way of dispensing his philanthropy that is safe and respectful of the dignity of the people who flock to his home from necessity or desperation.

Ours is not yet a litigious society, the type in which a man who crashed the car he had stolen from a parking lot sought damages from for his extensive injuries from the car's owner on the ground that if the owner had kept his car in a good working condition, the accident would not have occurred and he, the petitioner – and car thief —would still have the use of his legs.

Or the type in which the driver of a recreational vehicle that crashed while he was away from the steering wheel sought compensation from its manufacturers on the grounds that nowhere was a warning displayed that you could not leave the steering wheel while the vehicle was in motion to make coffee in the kitchenette at the rear.

Both petitions failed, I should add. But they go to show what can happen in a litigious society. Nothing is too frivolous, too outlandish, to bring before the courts.

In such a setting, Senator Saraki would now be drowning in an avalanche of wrongful-death lawsuits brought by relations of the casualties seeking hefty damages on the perfectly reasonable ground that he knew or should have known from experience that a stampede was likely to occur for the gifts he was dispensing, but had failed to take measures to forestall it; in short, that the deaths and injuries resulted from his negligence.

But ours, fortunately for him, is not that kind of society – at least, not yet.