A timely warning to Kogi East: silence and complacency are no longer options as political exclusion threatens the zone’s historical and democratic inheritance.
Kogi East now teeters on the edge of political erasure. The ancestral citadel that once anchored governance in Kogi is being systematically dismantled under the guise of rotation, equity, and continuity. What began as Yahaya Bello’s audacious centralization of power has metastasized into Ahmed Usman Ododo’s sophisticated doctrine of exclusion — a continuity not of governance, but of domination. This is not speculation; it is a blueprint — deliberate, precise, and long-term, stretching toward 2039, with Kogi East relegated to the periphery of a state it midwifed into existence.
The Okun Leadership League (OLL) has sounded the alarm. According to its statement, Ododo transformed a meeting meant to address rising kidnappings and killings in Okunland into a political rally for 2027 — boasting of a rotational formula conceived by Bello. Kogi Central will retain power until 2031, pass it to Kogi West until 2039, and only then might Kogi East be “considered.” He reportedly questioned historical voter and population figures of the East — a claim as audacious as it is historically bankrupt.
This is not politics. This is expropriation. The Igala nation was foundational to Kogi’s creation in 1991. Its population, territory, and administrative sophistication defined the very architecture of the state. To now hear a sitting governor denigrate that foundation, while orchestrating royal obedience from Okunland, is a moral outrage and a calculated act of political sabotage.
Kogi East must awaken — immediately, strategically, and collectively. Power does not pity the passive. In politics, silence is a form of suicide. Bello’s rise was circumstantial; his reign, a masterclass in exclusion and ethnic manipulation. He weaponized ethnicity, monetized loyalty, and institutionalized deception. Ododo is no accident — he is a manufactured extension, programmed to perpetuate the same architecture of control, only more refined.
From Bello to Ododo, Kogi’s governance has remained trapped in a recursive cycle of deceit. What the East perceives as politics, the Central executes as permanence. The rhetoric of “rotation” is merely anesthesia — a linguistic sedative to lull the dispossessed into complicity while their inheritance is quietly expropriated.
An Igala proverb warns: “When the blind man refuses to learn the road, the fool will lead him astray.” That proverb speaks directly to Kogi East today — politically blind, historically distracted, and strategically fragmented, while its ancestral power base is systematically dismantled.
Ododo’s alleged claim that Kogi Central intends to “match Igala’s four terms” exposes the intellectual vacuity of contemporary governance. Power is not arithmetic; it is stewardship. The Igala’s sixteen-year leadership was not a product of conspiracy but of democratic legitimacy. From Prince Abubakar Audu’s infrastructural legacy to Captain Idris Wada’s administrative prudence, Kogi East once embodied governance excellence. What has followed since 2016 is institutional decay — unpaid civil servants, collapsing infrastructure, and propaganda as policy.
Professor Ali Mazrui once observed: “When power loses its moral center, it transforms into predation.” The Bello–Ododo continuum is that predation made policy — an intricate system of exclusion disguised as continuity.
Kogi East must reject political infantilization. The battlefield is no longer fought with guns but with narratives, influence, and organizational precision. The Central has mastered narrative monopoly; the East must master counter-narrative strategy. History is rewritten not by the powerful but by the silent.
Bello’s eight-year rule was a masterclass in manipulation; Ododo’s tenure is its perfection. Both men operate on the same ideological blueprint: governance as inheritance, democracy as theater. The rhetoric of “equity” is semantic camouflage for political heist.
The people of Kogi East must choose between nostalgia and necessity. Sentiment will not rescue a future already mortgaged to complacency. Strategy will. Unity will. Early preparation will. The elite must detoxify from political servitude; traditional institutions must reclaim moral authority; youths must abandon political idolatry and recover ancestral assertiveness.
Indifference now is political suicide. If Kogi East continues to sleep, it will awaken to historical disinheritance. Bello began rewriting Kogi’s origin story; Ododo is scripting its final act. Future generations may grow up believing governance was born in Okene, baptized in Kabba, and buried in Idah.
An Igala maxim cautions: “When a people fail to stand, strangers will sit in their place.” The prophecy has begun.
Kogi East must rise intellectually and politically. It must reconstruct its leadership compass, consolidate internal blocs, and reassert its historical centrality. Waiting for 2039 is political surrender masquerading as patience.
In this age of creeping political colonization, neutrality is treason. The Bello–Ododo project is not governance; it is institutionalized exclusion. When marginalization becomes law, strategic defiance becomes duty — not with violence, but through moral intelligence, electoral discipline, and unity.
Power is never inherited by the passive; it bends only to those who understand its calculus and master its psychology.
The thunder that once roared from Okene now echoes across Kabba. Whether it reaches Idah as salvation or devastation depends entirely on the will of Kogi East to act before the flood.
History watches. Posterity records. The River Niger listens for the footsteps of those who remember their origin — or those who will surrender destiny to the mathematics of deceit.
Because in Kogi politics, silence is not peace. It is extinction.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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