It’s been three and half years Alhaji Yahaya Bello was swept into Lugard House as the 5th Executive Governor of Kogi State.
Voodoo and satanic corruption leading to nonpayment of salaries, thuggocratic tendencies and infrastructural deficit have remained as the all time high motif of his administration.
Despite unprecedented huge earnings by the Abuja’s most visited and sleeping governor of the year who never mind the call of duty since the oath of office he took for good governance in 2016 and who is fond of wilful backward transfer of all misdeeds committed by himself to all the past Kogi State governors after the diversions of the three (3) years Federal Allocations, Paris refunds and bailout funds all by the Federal Government and internally generated revenue, the neophyte’ regime led by Governor Yahaya Bello has been sorted as the civil servants’ most unfriendly Governor after having a decade stint and experience as a Senior Federal Civil Servant in Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission office in Benue State.
He had unavoidably slided the state civil servants into downward unprofitable trend.
The civil servants are always found groaning over what appeared as the worst disproportionate poverty index level caused by the governor proven to be most challenging and circumstantial since 2016 to date and also known to be the highest in the country since the emergence of all forms of governments in Nigeria.
This has attracted cynical berated commentaries over nonperformance from people of all walk of life.
The acclaimed youngest Governor has not done well to put the state on the part of growths and developments and has also squandered the resources and opportunities available to him as well as the goodwill of the people of the state from the three senatorial districts.
Few months after his morbid and bizarre inauguration into an unprepared governance as a green horn he initiated the launchpad of process for extreme civil service corruptions called “the staff screening verification audits on overbloated civil service” unknown to the civil service rules and regulations which was termed by experts to be an all time political affairs that lasted for more than three years where Civil servants with terminal illnesses died with other(s) hanging themselves on tree(s) like the 54yr-old Me. Edward Soje who was Director in the State’ Teaching Service Commission and who was owed 11 months salary arrears whose wife after 17 years of marriage gave birth to a set of triplets at the Private Hospital in Abuja, who took his own life after committing suicide behind Mammy Market at the Maigumeri barracks, Nigeria Army Command Record Lokoja after unbelievable experience of nonpayment of salaries.
The terms of reference and ancillary modalities developed for the screening committees remained inconsequential under The APC National leadership whose current Chairman as the outgone Governor of Edo State as the former President of the Nigerian Labour Congress became taciturn without giving professional offer of advise on all labour laws and service at his disposal to the governor amidst arcane suspicious plural unwanted and broad based needless pains meted on the people which emanated from 3 year old screenings started by Major General Paul Okuntimo as her first chairman to Dr. Jerry Agbaji and which remain partially inconclusive uptill now under the problematic Yakubu Okala’s committee which undeniably according to experts of civil service including political scientists and historians alike referred to have become a major research question since history of governance.
The more than eight years exposure of Comrade Adam Oshiomhole as NLC President and as a productive former Governor could not yank out the State and her people especially the civil servants from the unwarranted degrading and unpromising levels of both human and infrastructural decay.
The future of the state is bleak after her descent into an abysmal monumental underdevelopments caused by Yahaya Bello after failing to chart the needed political stability and economical prosperity for the people.
The State is popular today as poverty, none developed and thuggery behemoths.
The northcentral state is undoubtedly the poverty capital of Nigeria whose civil servants and the rest populace are living below the poverty line due to nonpayment of their rightful entitlements.
According to a statewide condemnation, the Government has taken payments of salaries to his servants to be privilege endeavours with the expectations of thankfulness from the civil servants by the Government as it has happened recently.
Another source of exasperation to the people of the state was the personally bogus, and ambitious inordinate anticipatory budgets declared by the Governor Yahaya Bello as contained in his asset declaration documents which many described as the disclosure of moves meant for amassing ill gotten wealth from the public patrimony.
The humongous forty one billion naira (N41B) declared by him was the first to have been declared by any Governor since the creation of the state.
The height of his Executive rascality was nonpayment of two years salaries, allowances and other stringent benefits to the Deputy Governor, Mr. Simon Achuba which has caused the Governor National embarrassments down to the presidential seat of power after the allegations of threats on the Deputy Governor.
Another Woman civil servant, Mrs. Bidemi Matthew has popped up lately in a video which has gone virile on the new media bitterly complaining about not being paid for two years.
It is against this we maintained that:
“Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history which cut without wounding and enobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals”
Given the above; we wish to advise Governor Yahaya Bello that the best option available to his government, is for him to step aside, drop his 2019 ambition while resolving in unison with the APC in the state to tender an unreserved apology to the people especially the civil servants he had deliberately plunged or kept in hardships, poverty and hunger for more than three years thereby avoiding needless plundering of the state’ meagre resources that can be directed usefully in both human and infrastructural developments rather than siphoned it into private pockets through corruption.
– Moses Abdulrahman Yusuf, a journalist, writes from Anyigba.
