Kogi Cannot Survive Injustice Beyond 2027: The Bello–Ododo Power Monopoly Must End

There comes a moment in the life of a state when truth refuses to whisper, refuses to knock, and instead breaks the door from its hinges. Kogi State has reached that moment. What Yahaya Bello engineered from 2016 to date is not governance but a methodical capture of a whole state by one enclave—an audacious conversion of a multi-ethnic political entity into a private territorial estate where power is hoarded like family inheritance and public offices are traded like personal property. Kogi is not operating as a democracy; it is breathing like a hostage territory waiting for rescue.

Those pretending not to see this injustice are not blind; they are collaborators. The pattern is too stark, too repetitive, too mathematically obscene to be accidental. For ten uninterrupted years—2016 to 2024 under Yahaya Bello, and from 2024 to date under Usman Ododo—the governorship of Kogi State has been locked inside one LGA: Okene.

A state of 21 LGAs, three senatorial districts, and diverse nationalities somehow reduced to the political plantation of one enclave. This alone is a democratic travesty. But when placed beside the appointments that followed, it becomes a constitutional crime.

Under this same monopoly, the following positions are also occupied by Okene/Ebira LGAs:

1. Executive Governor 2016 to 2024 — Okene. The highest seat in the state, seized and ring-fenced by one LGA.
2. Executive Governor 2024 till date — Okene. A seamless continuation of the same political monopoly.
3. Chief of Staff — Okene. The engine room of the government, locked inside the same enclave.
4. Attorney General & Commissioner for Justice — Okene. Justice itself hijacked by the very group benefiting from injustice.
5. Head of Service — Okene. The entire civil service was placed under one ethnic command.
6. Accountant General — Okene. State finances controlled from the same political fortress.
7. Commissioner for Health — Okene. Even the health of the state is monopolised.
8. Commissioner for Rural Development & Power — Okene. Power supply and rural development? Also captured.
9. Director-General, Government House — Okene. Gatekeeping the government—same enclave.
10. Director-General, Land Bureau — Okene. Land matters? Same hands. Same circle.
11. Chairman, Pension Board — Okene. Even retirees must breathe through the same political nostrils.
12. Chairman, Board of Internal Revenue — Okene. State revenue? Centralised in one LGA.
13. Chairman, SUBEB — Okene. Basic education swallowed whole.
14. Chairman, Hajj Commission — Okene. Religious administration? Also annexed.
15. Chairman, Local Government Service Commission — Okene. Local government structure chained to one zone.
16. Chairman, Assembly Service Commission — Okene. The legislature’s administrative arm was captured.
17. Clerk, Kogi State House of Assembly — Okene. The legislative engine room—same origin, same enclave.
18. Chairman, Secondary Education Commission — Okene. Secondary education under identical dominance.
19. Twenty-Nine (29) out of Thirty-Six (36) Agencies, Boards and Commissions — controlled by one or two LGAs. This is not representation; this is occupation.
20. All viable, revenue-driving ministries — locked inside the same political fortress. Every critical ministry, every economic lifeline, every strategic arm of government is contained in one zone as if Kogi were conquered territory.
21. Alhaji Abdullahi Bello (Dollar), Chairman of the All Progressives Congress — Okene. The party itself— the referee of democracy—captured and pocketed by the same enclave.

When the APC Chairman, the Governor, the machinery of government, the boards, agencies, commissions, and the entire political infrastructure all originate from one LGA, what exists is not party leadership but a political cartel masquerading as governance.

This is not representation; this is annexation. This is not inclusion; this is conquest wearing a government badge.

And the Constitution does not even permit this madness. Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution forbids the dominance of public institutions by any group or section. Kogi today is the living, breathing violation of that constitutional command. A state that breaks the law as a governance philosophy cannot pretend to be legitimate.

To understand how grievous this distortion is, one must remember history. Kogi was born from the old Kabba Province—Igala, Okun, Kotonkarfe—not from an Ebira emirate. The founding logic of the state was inclusion, rotation, mutual recognition, and balance. Yahaya Bello did not merely depart from this logic; he vandalised it. He erected a political fortress where one group sits permanently in the throne room while the rest of the state waits in the corridor.

But injustice is not just political; it is economic. When one group captures the levers of power, the economy collapses into stagnation. Capital flows inward, not outward. Opportunities circulate among the same faces. Innovation evaporates. Human potential is wasted. Kogi is not only politically suffocating; it is economically starving because power has been monopolised, merit mutilated, and development replaced by entitlement.

And the danger extends beyond the state. A state where two-thirds of the people feel excluded is a state manufacturing instability. Nigeria is already battling insecurity on every front; it cannot afford a Kogi that becomes a pressure cooker of resentment because leadership mistook dominance for governance and fear for loyalty. In 2027, equity is not a luxury; it is a national security requirement.

At the heart of this disaster lies a moral collapse. Leadership in a democracy is measured by fairness, not force; by inclusion, not intimidation; by equity, not entitlement. Yet what Kogi has endured is governance through exclusion, a system that treats obedience as loyalty and power as hereditary property. No leadership that thrives on exclusion can claim legitimacy.

And Abuja cannot pretend not to see this any longer. The Presidency and the APC National Leadership must confront the fact that what is unfolding in Kogi is not a local quarrel but a national liability. A decade-long monopoly of power by one LGA damages the party’s reputation, undermines its message of fairness, and exposes a contradiction between what APC preaches at the federal level and what it tolerates in Kogi. Abuja must act—not as a favour to Kogi West, but as a duty to democracy. Equity in 2027 is not just a state demand—it is a federal integrity test.

Because 2027 is not another election; it is a referendum on whether Kogi remains a democratic state or continues as a seized territory.

Kogi will breathe again only when equity returns.

– Yusuf M.A.
For: Kogi Equity Alliance (KEA)