A leading Arewa group, Coalition of Northern Groups, CNG, has condemned the recent demolition of the ancestral home of late Dr Olusola Saraki by Kwara state government, saying the act was unacceptable.
A statement signed by the CNG Spokesperson, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, said the demolition had touched the feelings of the generality of northerners and Nigeria in whose service, the late Saraki lived and died.
The CNG lamented that Dr Olusola Saraki who sacrificed his entire adult in the service of humanity should be repayed in such a manner that was done by Kwara state government.
The group recounted that in addition to his innumerable mentorship and humanitarian services across Nigeria and the globe, Olusola Saraki, a medical doctor and physician, also served the nation and Kwara state in various productive capacities.
“As far back as 1977 for instance, Saraki was elected member of the Constituent Assembly that produced the 1979 Constitution. In 1979 he was elected a Senator of the Second Republic, and became Senate Leader. In 1983 Saraki was re-elected into the Senate on the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) platform.
“Earlier, after graduation from the University of London, and St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, he worked as a medical officer at the General Hospital, Lagos and the Creek Hospital, Lagos before joining politics to run in the 1964 parliamentary election for Ilorin as an independent.
“After the election, he returned to his medical practice in Lagos, only returning to party-politics in 1978/79.
“For this revered gentle servant of the people to be treated with disdain by the government, a few years after his death is therefore unexpected and downright unacceptable,” Suleiman said in the statement.
He warned that the group would not watch idly, while respected northern figures, living or dead are “deliberately ridiculed by political leaders, anywhere.”
