The Kwara State Government has demolished one of the houses of the late Dr Olusola Saraki. The house named Ile Arugbo and located in the GRA area of Ilorin, the state capital was built by the powerful politician, erstwhile Nigerian Senate Majority Leader and father of the immediate Senate President and former Governor of Kwara State, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki.

The building was known in Ilorin to be the place where the late Saraki distributed alms to old women and other vulnerable groups in Kwara State .

Eye witnesses say the house was demolished at about 4.00 a.m  on Thursday. Indeed the demolition, according to  the eye witnesses, did not go without the protestation of several women from Ilorin.

The current Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq had recently expressed his desire to take over the land on which the property was erected and hand it over to the state. He had claimed that the land was illegally acquired from the state.

It was in the same vein that the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr Rafiu Ajakaye spoke when he said in a statement that the late Kwara political leader, Alhaji Olusola Saraki never obtained a certificate of occupancy for the land.

The incumbent government in the state claims that the land was earmarked for  the building of a state facility before Saraki took possession of it. However, Dr Olusola Saraki erected his building on the land which the new governor of the state is now claiming about 30 years ago.

Little wonder that many political observers see the governor’s action as sheer vendetta targeted against the former senate president and his father’s legacy in the state. Abdulrazaq won the governorship election in Kwara State with a campaign that the suzerainty of the Saraki family over the state’s politics be broken. Former Senate President Bukola Saraki was an arch rival of the ruling All Progressives Congress at both national and state levels before and during the electioneering campaigns.

Dr Bukola Saraki has reacted to the demolition of his father’s property. He claims that the land in question was duly allocated to one of the companies of his father named Asa Investments Ltd in the 1980s and that the father had the valid occupancy title to the land.