By Yusuph Olaniyonu

WHAT  is usually mentioned is his privileged background. Reporters of his sojourn so far hardly give an account of his checkered history of challenges and tribulations and how he has emerged from each of them stronger, smiling, and smoother.

Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, who turned 60 today, is no doubt privileged by birth. As a secondary school student at Kings College in Lagos, his family owned an international bank, and his father was one of the country’s most powerful lawmakers.

However, he has over the years proven to be a notch above others like him who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. He had sustained and surpassed the legacies bestowed on him at birth. He has over the years proved that while his family name helped in his development, he has produced personal brilliance, sheer guts, the courage of convictions, the ability to withstand tribulations, and the ingenious capacity to think outside the box as a way of tackling the challenges that have often been thrown at him.

Unlike the children of other aristocrats, Saraki has repeatedly demonstrated to those who deliberately go out of their way to harm him because they despise the opportunities that nature has bestowed on him that you take him for granted at your peril.

When he emerged as one of the very few among his mates in Kings College that made it to medical college and became a medical doctor, it was because he was brilliant enough to earn good A-level credits at Cheltenham College, London, and that he could survive the rigours at the London Hospital Medical College.

After practising medicine at the Rush Green Hospital, Essex, he had planned to relocate to the United States and become a specialist doctor before family duty fell on him. The bank, which had been the prime investment and pride of his family, had been enmeshed in an ownership crisis.

It was a case that jolted the implicit trust his late father, Dr. (Oloye) Abubakar Olusola Saraki, usually had in friends. When he won the case, he was happy that Bukola agreed to abandon his career in medicine and return home to take charge of the bank. One could see the glint of pride and satisfaction when the late Second Republic Senate leader narrated the story to this writer in an encounter some times in the year 2000.

He was happy about some of the innovations that Bukola had introduced to the bank. For example, the SGBN was the first bank to introduce the automated teller machine, ATM, in Nigeria. The bank was doing well as it was the favourite of the well-to-do traders in Lagos, Maiduguri, Kano, and other commercial centres in the country. When SGBN had its challenges with participation in the consolidation policy of the Obasanjo/Soludo era, it was also the lot of the younger Saraki to struggle to ensure the legacy did not die. With the intense battles in the courtrooms and the board rooms, the Sarakis got the bank licence restored, first as a regional bank, and later, when they came back under the aegis of the Heritage Bank, it got the approval of the regulatory authority to operate nationwide. That was another instance where the younger Saraki is not the regular daddy’s boy. 

He is a fighter, thinker, strategist, visionary, and natural leader. It is for these qualities that he had been selected as one of the “young tigers” identified by those who envisioned the Vision 2020 project and was selected to be part of the think tank on developing a sustainable development agenda for the country.

That experience came in handy when he was appointed Special Assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo on budget matters in 2000. It was an assignment where he proved his mettle in policy formulation and sought to use the instrument of legislation to entrench such policies.

The younger Saraki again became the standard bearer and upholder when his father’s political group chose to punish treachery and remove the incumbent governor of Kwara State in 2003. It was an election in which the supporters of the incumbent administration deployed all weapons, tricks, and tactics in their arsenal. There was palpable fear that the young banker could be assassinated. Yet, many were surprised by his resilience, adaptability, and courage.

He was elected governor of Kwara, which was then a backwater state. The challenge was daunting, discouraging, and depressing. Yet, he remains unfazed. He set his focus on attracting industries, people, investments, and more federal presence to the state. Thus, his administration invested heavily in infrastructure development projects like undertaking a complete overhaul of the disused airport in the state and partnering with Overland Aviation Company to sustain flights in and out of Ilorin even when the government had to subsidise the operation.

The airport was also equipped with an aviation training college to train pilots, and the road to the airport was reconstructed and dualized. These were deliberate efforts to attract people and businesses into the state capital. People travelling to Osun State soon discovered that Ilorin airport was the best place to fly into before continuing their journey by road. Then, many housing estates named Mandatory Housing Estates I to V were constructed to further improve urban renewal and development. 

His post-2019 election attitude, in which he quietly wished the winners good luck and decided not to challenge the APC candidates’ victory in court, was well noted across the country and by the international community. He even decided to give the government a breathing space by staying away from Ilorin for the first two years. He has demonstrated his ability to stand up after any fall or to draw victory from the jaw of defeat.

In his party, the PDP, where he had sought the presidential ticket twice unsuccessfully, the leadership sees him as a force that cannot be ignored in rebuilding and refocusing the party for the electoral victory. He is the master strategist, mediator-in-chief, towering, battle-tested general, special envoy, and respected networker within the circle of friends of Nigeria abroad. With these unique angles to his sixty years of existence, Saraki remains the man who continues to win and is unbowed by adversity or setbacks. 

*Olaniyonu was special adviser, media and publicity, to Saraki as Senate President.