Under Fire For Demolishing Saraki’s Property, Kwara Govt Puts Defence

The Kwara State Government, Monday rebuffed claims that the Ile Arugbo demolished by the government at the beginning of the New Year was a settlement for old women.

Responding to fiery accusations of taking political vendetta against the Saraki family to the extreme, the administration in a statement said the settlement demolished was essentially a place for dispensing political patronage.

The claim was immediately dismissed by an associate of Senator Bukola Saraki who said that everyone in Nigeria knows that Ile Arugbo is a place where the old come for welfare, medications, food and such.

The Kwara State Communications Commissioner Murtala Olanrewaju in a statement Monday also dismissed insinuations of suppression of women’s rights saying that the Abdulrhaman Abdulrazaq administration had been nationally acknowledged for its pro-women inclinations.

The statement read in part:

“The property is one of the over 100 government assets in GRA, Ilorin Kwara State, Victoria Island Lagos, Kaduna, and Abuja investigated by the Asset Recovery Committee led by Senator Suleiman Ajadi, which were unlawfully converted to private use. Until its physical reclamation, the property comprised only of sheds,” Olanrewaju said.

“The property was never an old people’s home, nor was it residential; nobody lived there. The property has always been a security risk. No fewer than 97 people, mostly women, have died in mysterious stampedes in that facility as they scampered for handouts. There were yearly mass deaths in the said property in November 2010, June 2011, and October 2013. A google search will instantly reveal these sordid facts which were widely published in the media.

“Contrary to the claims by the opposition, the physical reclamation of the property by the government on 2 January 2020 was without any incident. Nobody was met on the property. It was never a place where people lived in, so the question of ejecting, maltreating or deploying violence against anyone did not arise. No court process has been served on the government.

“Without any legal basis to claim the property, the opposition later that morning (2 January) mobilised some women to stage a protest in which they portrayed the government as attacking old people who were quartered there. This is an outright fabrication. The Government strongly condemns the use and abuse of vulnerable and indigent old women for propaganda purposes.

“This Administration can boldly claim the trophy for being the most gender-friendly sub-national government in Africa in recent history with a 56%-woman cabinet. Furthermore, women are heads of key government institutions like the Civil Service Commission, the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KW-IRS) as well as the Head of Service.”

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