It is really lamentable how the people of Kogi State sell the fortune of today’s politics for calumny and blackmail. Gone are the days when politics were based on real facts and figures. Today, my people look for deflating punctures to bring the soaring points of their opponents down. Such practices are debasing and repugnant.
Between 1999 and 2003 when Audu was the governor of Kogi State, the allocation coming to the state was too hungry to pay salaries and breed developments. In order to have something tangible to live with long after hunger and thirsts were gone, Audu decided to work with workers by ploughing parts of their salaries into developments. If he had not done so, we would not have got the Kogi State University, Obajana Cement Factory, the 1st and 2nd 200 Housing Estates, Phases I and II Housing Estates, Workers’ Village, Kogi Polytechnic, dualisation of Lokoja Township Roads, Kogi Radio, etc. today. Audu extended his hands beyond Lokoja to include towns and villages making Kogi State today. There is no part of Kogi state, however primitive that does not have a touch of “Ada-Oja”
If the money was not enough to develop the state to the extent that Audu wanted to go before the government was truncated in 2003, where on earth would he have got the N11b for which he is being disturbed through EFCC today that he would not have used the money to build Kogi Airport?
Audu was framed by the PDP government under Ibro back then as being corrupt just to deflate his swelling political influences and to cow him to submission. If any arrest should be made, it should consume Ibrahim Idris for his inability to account for the huge allocations that the state enjoyed under his government and for which he has no tangible project to attest to his judicious use of the money. If any, Ibrahim Idris should be questioned on why Kogi owes so much debt over so few achievements. If any, Wada should be arrested for running near non-existential government, devoid of any achievement.
President Muhammadu Buhari will NOT dent his image if he lifts Audu’s hand in acceptance of his candidature for the November 21st, 2015 Kogi election because Audu is not a thief. He was just accused as one just to kill his political career. His constant clearance and cleanliness to contest attest to the fact that the accusers have no facts to nail him. And because he is not a thief, he will use our fat resources judiciously. Youths will be sincerely employed(unlike this current government that promised 500 teachers job that has no head or tail till today); Lokoja and many parts of the state will be beautified again; we will have encouraging economy, and skill acquisition programmes will reach every tribe, tongue, religion, nook and cranny of the state. As he will win the election on November 21st, 2015, he will do in 3 months what Ibrahim Idris and Wada failed to do in 12 years.
Odih Daniel N.
Lokoja, Kogi State
