I have always followed a series of dubious, diversionary and misleading trends and methods many Nigerian political officeholders use when they want to embezzle public funds. They will create an inconsequential (sometimes difficult to quantify) opportunities to make the people feel the public funds are being spent on reasons beneficial to them other than just robust welfare packages and infrastructure. Some choose security, others choose projects they will sleep on and will eventually leave behind in the event of the expiration of their tenures.
In so many cases, the politicians use insecurity to milk the people dry. They are well aware that people cannot feed fat and go to sleep if their items of property and lives are not safe. Where there is relative peace, many politicians will create war, chaos or fear, so that through it, they will draw the public sympathy to their course and plight. In some cases, those in charge of money divert the public funds to quell the mutiny they themselves initiated. Governor Yahaya Bello is unfortunately one of these cunny politicians – although he is being puerile about it.
Gov. Bello is well aware of the impending investigation by the EFCC into the Paris Club refund and other bailout funds given to many states (Kogi State inclusive) of the federation for the settlement of salaries and other emoluments. In December, 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari, knowing the difficulties in the country, lived up to his pledge to ease salary crises in all the states by releasing N388.304 billion to 35 states from the Paris Club refund, with Kogi State having N11,211,573,328.19. Mr. President’s overriding concern was for the welfare of the Nigerian people, considering the fact that many States were owing salaries and pension, causing considerable hardship.
But of late, the Presidency was uncomfortable with the funds management by governors. The agreement between the Federal Government and the governors was very clear. While 50 per cent of the amount released shall be used to offset outstanding salary and pension arrears, the remaining 50 per cent would be used for the payment of other obligations. Some governors including Governor Yahaya Bello however reneged on this agreement. They diverted this money into their private pockets and businesses and leave the people licking their own wounds.
In Kogi State, many of the workers have never been paid their salaries since the inception of this embryonic government of Yahaya Bello. Mr Bello, copying other established politicians, and being surrounded by a retinue of immature, hungry, greedy and tyro aides has been unfeeling towards the people of the state, asphyxiating them. We are not surprised at the state of things in Kogi State. What does one expect of a man that was taken from the car park into the Government House by forces driven by insatiable desire to loot? Is the APC National Chairman, the Attorney General of the Federation and other devil-controls-us politicians, who put heads together to bring Bello in not the problem we have today? If Bello was truly voted in by the masses, would he not have been merciful and useful to them?
Governor Bello, knowing fully well that he has a truck-load of salary arrears of workers and pensioners hanging heavy on him, and the diversionary use to which he had put the public funds, where he and his retinue of tyro and jejune aides had already shared the public funds, Gov. Bello resort to tension-creation by first heralding on the 21st of February, 2017, as published by kogireprters.com, in Abuja at a security meeting that the Boko Haram members routed from the North-east, Nigeria had found their haven in Kogi State. The attendant capture of the advertised Boko Haram members a day later (22 February, 2017) going by the testimony of the Nigerian Army unit of Chari Maigumeri Barracks, Lokoja attests to the fact that Yahaya Bello is well on his way to let the world see that he spent or had already spent the Paris Club funds and other bailout funds on insecurity, as governors of the three most volatile Boko Haram attacks would do.
Governor Bello should know that if by this creation of an imaginary monster of Boko Haram a real beast of bombing or destruction surfaces, he will be called to answer as the creator.
– Odih Daniel N.,
Lord Lugard Road, Lokoja, Kogi State.
Odih4sure@yahoo.com
@odih4sure
