I am angry, very angry. Certainly people are disappointed, dispirited over what recently happened to our democracy in Kogi state. I couldn’t have envisaged it, especially when those reveling are not unlike with armed robbers who broke into bank’s vault, drays away with huge sum of money and are celebrating success in a hideout.
It has never been this nasty. Not when the late Prince Abubakar Audu, Ibrahim Idris and Wada led the people between 1999 and 2015.
Elections were conducted but peoples’ vote did not count. Billions of Naira was also spent but few people just sat somewhere under the safety of soldiers to write out results and sent same to INEC for declaration as election result. What a great heist. In Sudan, perhaps Uganda, it wasn’t this awful.
Don’t quote me out of milieu, this is not about who won the election or who lost. But the veracity of electoral process. It’s about inviolability of free choice by the people.
Considering what happened between February 23 and March 9, it is outlandish for anyone to assume that we still rehearse democracy. Even when we are yet to recover from the ruinous shocks that the senatorial mandates were stolen and given to some anointed candidates, APC Kogi coercively won the twenty five seats in the state assembly.
How did it happen? Are there no candidates from the opposition? Why has human right/pro-democracy community maintained taciturn as if nothing happened? Could their stillness suggestive of acquiescence with the grand fraud?
No doubt, APC Kogi has secured for itself a free reign come June. That is when the new administration (state assembly) will be inaugurated. And what this mean is that, the decision on how, when and where to govern the people will be decided by Just one party. What a shame! A democratic society that adopts multi-party system.
The most unfathomable was how unrestrained and reprehensible some people are, positing that winning the twenty five state assembly seats symbolizes APC Kogi’s good governance. How? Did APC actually won these mandates? Can’t these people be truthful for once? Are they not living among us? Can’t they gauge the people’s mood and reactions after APC Kogi was declared to have held sway in all the legislative seats?
We have just witnessed a grand theft of people’s mandate by the INEC in connivance with APC Kogi. As a matter of fact, some invidious politicians have carved fiefdom out of the society as their territories of influence. The party and leaders everyone randomly rejected have been foisted on the people once more. What a big swoop in our recent democratic history- a huge setback for democracy. So brazen and audacious was the entire plots scripted and executed with such reckless disdain for any pretence of moderation that one is left gasping for breath. Quite indefensibly, the gains of our democracy in the previous years have been successfully rolled back.
How can history be fair to these people who have successfully bastardized the sanctity of free and fair choice by the people? For the greed of just one party and its flag bearer (Yahaya Bello) the principle of governance that inculcated a collectively opinionated judgment have been scrapped. And the entire affairs is now left in the hands of some demigods whose progressive agendas don’t extend beyond the stretch of an arm.
We saw how violence was unleashed on the people by hooligans, ruffians of a cursed ancestry at the prompting of these invidious politicians. We saw how guns and machetes were used to coerce people into voting APC Kogi. Some part of places where opposition was clearly in early leads, elections were either inconclusive or cancelled over flimsy concerns.
For those few celebrating the fraudulent state assembly election, and are congratulating the said winners. It is difficult not to pity them for what they believed to have achieved. They know that those who actually won are not the winners.
They know it. I know it. Yahaya Bello and his APC-Kogi know it. They know that APC and its atrocious slogan ‘integrity’ had been rigged back to office for another four miserable years by men of low morality. But in the end we will all bear the perils. No matter how they seems to look the other way, what goes around comes around. They can get drunk to stupor with crumbs they currently leverage. Nothing lasts forever. The symptoms of these lunatic acts is so effecting that it would be difficult to shy away from.
No wonder some good minded people are seemingly giving up on Kogi state. Friends have sounded firmly in my ears that the free-for-alls notion I envisaged for Kogi state will not see the rising sun but I was undaunted. But now I know. Oh yes! Now I know that there are traducers, agent of vices and anti-peace whose mission in live is to ensure that the beautiful aspects of life don’t reflect on other people. No matter how hard you try, they are there to render your efforts fruitless.
For brigands populating the landscape, it’s difficult not to lose hope on Kogi state. And going by what triggered the most brazen theft of the people’s mandate in the recent history. At any rate, with Yahaya Bello in the saddle, its dream and hope deferred. He has successfully built the wall of Berlin around himself with which to be re-elected as Kogi state governor in 2020.
As they celebrate the victory of evil over good which Chief Obafemi Awolowo said it’s not permanent, I can see perks clearly inscribed ‘guilt’ in their eyes. Even though the next Kogi assembly will be dominated by product of bullets and not PVCs, I hear fear and anxiety in their voices when they speak. I have seen the National chairman of the party shivering when he said democracy can only flourish when people who can accept the pain of ‘rigging’ are the ones to participate in an election. Their words quake in fear of their conscience. This is an open wound that Uthman Dan Fodio said only truth can heal.
In the build up to election, APC Kogi tried to portray a brave face on the soaring situation. But they actually knew people are exhausted of a government who would rather compound detrimental issues like insecurities instead of working to fix it. It’s not for nothing that Nigerians who unanimously voted APC into power in 2015 had afterwards, realized their mistakes and could not wait for 2019 to right up the wrongs. Economy is in the throes of death, businesses imperiled, healthcare is a crying shame. Education is in a derelict state of shambles. Civil servants were reduced to meagre thoroughfare panhandlers. Everywhere you go, despondency hovers in the air. Yet, there was no step or concern for amelioration. How can a party and leader associated with such anguish win election? We were tired and went into election to get a new pathfinder who would retrace the victorious steps of our forefathers. We tried to exercise our franchise in electing a leader who will take us on a new direction.
But its tragically pathetic, APC who benefitted from the sanctity of ballot box in 2015, decided it was too antiseptic and suffocating a ritual to observe in its free, fair and transparent form. No wonder, Buhari would seize every opportunity to express shock that former president Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat so forthrightly. The most disgusting of all was that, few days to the election, we were artfully schemed. Buhari sold a dummy to us by saying that anyone who is found wanting for ballot snatching should be killed. Shockingly, his men went behind the scene, quietly goaded the APC apparatchiks, the military, the police and even the INEC into snatching the same ballot boxes. And shamelessly manipulated the results. As reports had it, the military and the police were virtually aiding the snatching of ballot boxes. Can you see how meaningless the integrity of electoral process is to APC? As usual, I had expected the chief of army staff who is good at probing himself and delivering judgment in his favor to react to no avail. I have also said this repeatedly that, APC Kogi is not interested in a semblance of free and fair election. I have been justified. As things stood, the gubernatorial election in November will be gory. Yahaya Bello, been the major beneficiary of the pyrrhic victories so far, would not let go or concede power easily, especially now that every tools had been advantageously positioned.
So Kogites can only watch and pray. No one should think Bello will not be re-elected. No one should dream about it, because it would not come persuasively. Those who have won both the assembly/legislative seats as far as I can see are not in for any progressive agenda. But a perfect calculations to return the governor back to Lugard house.
Be that as it may, even though APC Kogi’s devotees have been declared winner of the Match 9 state assembly election by INEC, their supporters were not really celebrating. There seemed to be a silence funeral going on after INEC declared them winners. In fact there were grief-stricken looks on their eyes.
APC Kogi has murdered my sleep and will sleep no more. We will continue to question the injustice until they take the right paths. I will strongly advised opposition who have what it takes to seek redress in court. Let the few who see Kogi’s freedom as a must-be-done task join in the fight.
God Bless Kogi state
– John Paul (Operation Win Back Kogi State).
07064258752
