Have you met the new Kwara Governor-elect before? If you do, you will realise that he is a complete gentleman, who has a calm mien. He is cool and easy going and very painstaking and meticulous. That is why many tend to underrate him. What many often don’t know is that Alhaji Abdurahman Abdulrazaq is not as laid back as they think. City People can reveal authoritatively that he is a very brilliant businessman turned politician who is very calculating.
He knows what he wants at any point in time and knows how to get it. Though he looks gentle, he can take tough decisions when the need crises. He is also very firm in his ways. He does not suffer fools gladly. He is humble and respectful but he does not like for you to take him for granted.
That is the mistakes many politicians make with him. Because he is not loud or boastful they had assumed it will be an easy ride for them to beat him at the polls. But he surprised them. He shocked many Kwara politicians who had thought he would not be able to withstand the onslaught of the PDP in Kwara. They had concluded too early in the race that Rahman as he is fondly called was no match for Sai Bukky in Kwara. They had forgotten that Rahman had been at the sidelined for close to 20 years, plotting how best to tackle Bukola Saraki.
Revealed an insider, the past 20 years both Rahman & Bukky had not seen eye-to-eye. Bukky never thought Rahman could ever become a Senator not to talk of becoming a Governor. He just couldn’t picture Rahman as an astute politician that he has turned out to be.
So much so that in the build up to the last General elections in Kwara State, Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki did not see defeat coming. He and his pro-Saraki followers had assumed that the Kwara APC candidate, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq would be a walk-over. Somehow they erroneously felt, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq was just a businessman who just wanted to gamble with the governorship ticket and then go back to his Oil business in Lagos.
The moment Bukola Saraki and his group decamped from APC to PDP, Rahman knew the coast was clear. And when finally Saraki annointed Atunwa to be the PDP candidate. the Abdulrazaq group knew victory was possible. One of the things that worked for Rahman is his quiet disposition. He is not loud. He is a quiet and easy going achiever who always achieves his goals ultimately. He is an accomplished businessman and an astute politician. Many only see the business side of him and not the politician in him. For years he has been an active but silent player in politics. Before he went into politics fully he had been working with a lot of the political players in Kwara silently. It was not until 2011 that he began to step out openly.
At the outset, when he contested for the Kwara Central Senatorial District Slot, under the Peoples Democratic, PDP, in 2011, he failed to make any significant impact and many people thought he wasn’t serious about it. Some of his friends were said to have advised him to leave politics and face his Oil business that launched him into affluence and fame. But Rahman, did not despair. Today, his perseverance has paid off. Only very few people believed that Rahman could make it. They felt he could never beat Bukola Saraki in Ilorin. Both are from 2 big families: the Abdulrazaq family and the Saraki family.
For very many years, Rahman had played big in the Oil sector. He had over the years risen to become an Oil Sheikh. In the 90s Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, started a flourishing Oil company called First Fuels Limited which was a big player in the Oil sector then. His journey to fame actually started when he ventured into the importation of petroleum products, at a relatively young age. His pedigree worked for him. Abdulrazaq is the son of the first Northern lawyer in Nigeria, Alhaji AGF Abdulrazaq. He was in the news a while back when his company had several millions litres of petroleum products stored in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s tanks in Ejigbo depot as well as Mosimi depot in Ogun State, serving the needs of independent marketers in the South-West.
Again, eyes turned on him when Mobil Oil wanted to export its first batch of condensate out of Nigeria, as he succeeded in getting the best international prices and buyers for the product. For years, he executed a lot of oil-related transactions that launched his firm into the big league and fetched him billions as reward. For obvious reasons, many had expected him to own a private depot or refinery in Nigeria. But for Abdulrazaq, who is said to have made positive impacts on the lives of many younger businessmen, that was not the case.
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