Former Senate President Bukola Saraki has dismissed criminal charges filed against him by the Kwara State government over the 2018 Offa robbery, describing them as a politically motivated witch-hunt.
The Kwara government recently filed 20-count charges against Saraki, former Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed, and two others over allegations of arming suspects convicted in connection with the Offa bank robberies.
The charges were filed at the Kwara State High Court in Ilorin on April 9, 2026.
In a statement on Friday, April 17, Saraki described the move as a “frivolous move and an abuse of court process to embarrass my person.”
He claimed his alleged connection to the robbery was “designed under the Buhari administration with the connivance of some individuals from Kwara State as an instrument of blackmail to seize political power from our group in 2019.”
Saraki said the case was investigated by police from the inspector-general’s office, and two separate legal opinions from the director of public prosecution in the attorney-general’s office dated June 22, 2018, and August 23, 2018, “stated that there was no evidence directly or indirectly linking me to the robbery incident.”
“Based on the DPP’s advice, four suspects were charged in court by the Kwara State Government. They were convicted at the trial court and the conviction was upheld by the appellate court. The matter is now before the Supreme Court,” he said.
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The former senate president accused Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of resurrecting the charges following his recent interview on Channels TV where he criticized insecurity in the state.
“I noticed that in his propaganda plan to circulate his frivolous charges and other skewed documents as paid advertisements in the national newspapers, even before serving the defendants, he intentionally hid the DPP reports and other documents which put a lie to the charade he is perpetuating,” Saraki said.
He claimed the governor attempted to induce families of robbery victims to file civil suits against him but failed when the families “backed out.”
“A sitting governor who is accusing his two immediate predecessors of armed robbery is only making a mockery of the institution. He is only taking the governorship of our dear state to the gutter,” Saraki stated.
“One would have thought that a governor whose state has lost over 400 lives to banditry between January 2025 and March 2026, with over 100 others kidnapped in the worst cases of insecurity since its creation, would concentrate efforts and focus attention on taming the menace.”
On April 5, 2018, armed robbers raided multiple banks and attacked a police station in Offa, killing 33 people including a pregnant woman and 12 police officers.
In September 2024, five defendants were convicted of the crime. Their conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal in January.