Double Speaking and Facts, Bolaji Abdullahi in Perspective By Abdulrazaq Hamzat

I was in the vehicle yesterday morning, when the radio was tuned into diamond fm, where Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi was being engaged as a guest.

It was between 5-10 minutes drive before I got down, but the short period of time afforded me an opportunity to listen to the senatorial candidate of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) respond to some questions on his ambition.

Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi is an intellectual and you may disagree with some of his opinions or postulations, but you cannot take away his intellectualism. It doesn’t matter if you belong to different political parties.

In his engagement on that program, I categorize them into 2 sections.

1. Political Talks
2. Issue based conversation

The political talks are unfortunate, because it diminishes the quality of the candidate and watered down the richness of the issue based conversation.

In the political talks, he mentioned the fabricated poor rating of kwara by waec in education, a rating which had been debunked by waec more than a month ago.

The fact that more than a month, after waec had debunk the fabricated content, a former minister and former commissioner for education would still use it as campaign talking point is to say the least, unfortunate.

Ofcourse, Mallam Bolaji would not be said to be unaware that the information had been debunked, but the fact that despite knowing the information was false, he still uses it as a talking point means that he deliberately used it out of mischief, which i believe doesn’t represent him well. Probably that’s just a way to try to tarnish the achievement of the current administration in education, a sector he has once led in the state, but we all know the administration is doing well in education, irrespective of what he says.

The second part of the interview I listened to is the issue based discussion, on legislative responsibility.

I am happy that Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi has started the conversation on core responsibility of the legislature.

No doubt, based on the little part I heard, I could say that Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi has appreciable understanding of legislative responsibility and the fact that he’s willing to start public sensitization on the differences between the legislature and the executive is a welcome development.

One of the core point of disagreement between Kwara Must Change’s legislative watch and the opinion of its critics is that we gave more points to representation, while they believe legislative advancement should have been given more points.

However, we know for a fact that, without adequate representation, in terms of proper engagement of constituents, legislative advancement would amount to nothing in the real sense.

So, I am looking forward to more of such issue based engagement, to ensure we properly distinguish between legislature and executive.

The last part of the engagement was where Bolaji Abdullahi was contradicting himself.

After the defeat of the Saraki dynasty, his position on what led to their down fall was captured in an interview with premium times. But it appeared he has also succumb to the new propaganda narrative that the dynasty is trying to push forth.

That’s a double speak, but he has a right to double speak. The facts will not change because someone chooses to double speak.

In all, I enjoyed the interview and I am looking forward to more of it.