When he clinched the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket to vie for the Kwara central senatorial election, many waved his ambition aside. The people of Kwara state have seen him lose the same contest in the past but that didn’t deter him. Ibrahim Oloriegbe vowed he would retire Senate President Bukola Saraki and true to his words, he did exactly that on Sunday, at least for now.
He polled 123,808 votes to defeat Saraki who had 68,994 votes. What a landslide victory! A margin of 54,814
Wondering why his victory is spectacular? For one, he defeated not just any senator but the senate president. And secondly, his rival’s family has been literally running the affairs of Kwara for decades. Saraki’s father, Olusola, was a prominent politician in the second republic, his sister, though not in the same political camp, was a senator. On his part, the senate president left office as the governor of Kwara state and saw to the emergence of Abdulfatah Ahmed, one of his staunch loyalists, as successor.
Back to Oloriegbe, the man of the moment. A graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the APC candidate is not a new face in the politics of Kwara. In 1999, he was elected a member of the Kwara house of assembly under the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). He held sway as majority leader till he left in 2003.
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