Bukola Saraki and the Story of the Barren and Fertile Soils
Reflections on the Nigerian 2019 Presidential/Senate Elections
Presented and Edited by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Context
The Facebook post below and the response to it immediately after is a discussion of relationships between opportunity and achievement at the level of the individual and the community, inspired by the person of Nigerian politician Dr. Bukola Saraki, in the context of his recent defeat in his effort to retain his Senate seat in the recently concluded Nigerian Senate and Presidential elections, thus losing him his role as Senate President, a role in which he had been a central national political strategist, demonstrating the continual success of his efforts to constantly reinvent himself as a career politician, even though a medical doctor, in a country in which politicians live in a largely totally different economic cosmos from other Nigerians, thereby taking forward the legacy of his father Dr. Olusola Sarakai, who once ruled Kwara State as a personal fiefdom, his grip so strong he would announce that he was travelling to Mecca as a Muslim to decide in prayer who would become governor of the state, even as hopefuls would follow him on the pilgrimage in the hope they would be chosen.
Riding on this wave of power, Bukola has become Kwara state governor, after which he went to the Senate. His sister, Gbemi, has also been in the Senate. His defeat a few days ago may suggest a seismic shift in Kwara state politics which analysts are still trying to decipher.
As it is, he epitomizes the acme of dynastic privilege and this relationship between opportunity and achievement with reference to himself and other Nigerians is what the post and the comments I have selected reflect upon.
To go to the original Facebook post, click on the time stated under the name of the poster, Moji Danisa.
At just 56 years old, Dr. BUKOLA SARAKI has achieved the impossible.
*Medical Doctor
*Bank M/D
*P.A to the President
*Governor for 8 years
*Senator for 8 years
*Senate President for 4 years
* Husband to 1 Beautiful world changer and global advocate for better health outcomes for All.
*U.N. Advocate for Clean cook stoves.
*Blessed with 4 (normal) children
*His first daughter is married [ a critical identity for women in Nigeria]
*His second son is the youngest football manager in the world 😎
*His Son again released a jersey with NIKE and got featured on CNN
*His twin daughters are both studying medicine.
Yet some people who are in their late 40s with nothing to show for their lives apart from having their children on N-power & them collecting Tradermoni [ an economic incentive of the current APC govt,a political party to which Saraki is opposed] are coming online to mock him [ on account of his electoral defeat].
LONG LIVE OLOYE
@bukolasaraki
@toyinsaraki [ his wife]
Copied
Picture shows Saraki in his chambers as Senate President
A sub-thread in the larger body of responses to the post:
Eberekpe Ogho ... .And at the end of the day you may just round off with the conclusion that these are not the achievements that matter ... And maybe if those so-called wailers and haters had had the same fraudulent opportunities he had initiated by his father, they would have surpassed him. At the end of the day, still, after his father was rubbished, they only recently treated him as the idiot they think he must be. And maybe only in Nigeria people as he is regarded as achievers; at other climes, one word for him: OLE！ [Yoruba, Saraki's mother tongue, for 'thief' ] Today, we are being reeled with his achievements because he has just recently fallen from the grace of his long political thievery just to continue to make him relevant in the eyes of some. These are men who should never be reckoned with because in the midst of abject poverty of their making they have become somebody to demand lordship from the produce of their evil and wickedness Hide 15 replies
Raphael Igbineweka So why wasn't your own father able to also give you same opportunity like his father did?
Jealousy 
Eberekpe Ogho Well, call it what you like, insult me if you wish；the truth stands. This kind of reasoning and thinking would not take us anywhere when we label some matters as jealousy. When politicians live like movie stars and many just get ever poorer... Only, perhaps in this country, we sympathise with those who have made us stupid and actually think we are stupid. When some things happen to us, or the like of Saraki, we say, nay, it cannot and must not be whereas we quickly forget the fundamental law of attraction or reaping and sowing. Have you ever wondered why three arrows are sent to three persons, one dies, the other is only hurt and the third did not even realise an arrow was thrown？ A time is coming when the poor would ask for their pound of flesh in this country. My father was so spiritually mature to understand life；to understand the fake life and the real; that you are a benefit to mankind or mankind would ask you of your stewardship. Don't be carried away, I am neither the PDP [Saraki's party] nor the APC [the rival party] member nor belong to any party to start on Saraki's messes. I am not 'intelligent' enough or that 'bright' to be a Nigerian politician. I don't pity Saraki or Atiku or Buhari,[ the two major rival Presidential aspirants in the just concluded elections] like what Idiagbon [ regarded as a reformist military national leader in Nigerian history] said years back, these persons are the problems of Nigeria, and they are not worth the celebration. May the great OBA of BENIN be rich in wisdom. [the salutation to the Oba of Benin and the placing of his picture directly below is a symbolic evocation of the Benin identity of the person challenging the writer's response - and possibly of the writer himself and a call for comradely rather than rancorous debate, perhaps in the recognition of the issues discussed as pertaining to the welfare of all Nigerians, regardless of ethnicity or political affiliation, a solidarity of circumstance evoked by the image of the Oba as standing for that fundamental unification, an adaptation of a strategy in Benin discourse in relation to Benin people and those who identify with them, as I explain in "Developing the Philosophical and Mystical Possibilities of the Coronation Ceremonies of the Oba of Benin".
Raphael Igbineweka Eberekpe Ogho
Sir is not an insult..
Some people who are given lemon makes Lemonade out of it,while others just trash them..
There are millions of others kids who had better opportunities than he had,but today have nothing to show for it,so if he was able to make lemonade out of his lemon,we should at least give him credit.
Come to think of it,is Buhari not his father's age mate..
Why is Buhari not actually pushing his children into the political arena instead of him still playing the game. Eberekpe Ogho If every Nigerian is given lemon I am certain they would make lemonade；their lemonade may not taste the same, but we all would be comfortable with our lemon and the lemonade we make. Lemonade is the choice we make with our lemon, but the lemon must be available in the first place. Raphael Igbineweka Eberekpe Ogho
True...but some have lemon already planted in their compound,others don't...they look for their own seed to plant.
IF LIFE THROWS PEPPER AT YOU.. INSTEAD OF CRYING ,SIMPLY TAKE THE PEPPER AND MAKE YOUR OWN PEPPER SOUP OUT OF IT. Raphael Igbineweka Ajayi Oludotun
I must talk bedroom commentator
If you are as intelligent as you want people to believe,you will see the gentleman Eberekpe Ogho and I are having a very intelligent and matured discussion..
VOTRON DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE [ Mocking allusion to an animated film superhero] Eberekpe Ogho And when they do get that seed, the question then becomes, 'Is the soil enabled enough to make the seed grow？' Eberekpe Ogho Sis, Moji, please unblock the fellow；not all of us have word lemon to make a thirsty lemonade of expression. Raphael Igbineweka Eberekpe Ogho
Everyone went in search of diamond...but one man made more money selling them shovels..
So we all must not be on same level before we can all make it. Eberekpe Ogho I won't agree less, there must be diamond before we all can go asearch. Igbineweka, you know you are not telling yourself the truth by agreeing with the configuration of the Nigerian state... There is neither political nor economic decency in its structure that would not beg for anger. What happened in the recent presidential election is the testament of that anger；did you think people hated Buhari and loved Atiku, even more？No, the election was an evidence of a collective anger, and if Atiku had won, by any means necessary or not, the anger would have calmed only for a while and resurfaced much later. Your philosophy of lemon and lemonade, and now, diamond and shovel are meaningless in the setting called Nigeria. Do you think human cares about your successes or failures if they can define their own success and understand their failure with everything in place to deal with those failures？As the cloud is for all, all should be for the cloud. Society should have balance, is that balance visible in Nigeria, Eweka？ Please, don't lie.
·
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at
http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue Early archives at
http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html ---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit
https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment