By Dauda Musa
There is a lesson, very brutal lesson in the last minutes of a cockroach. By instinct, it survives through caution hugging the dark, avoiding exposure, and reading danger with precision. But once poisoned, it bursts into the open, jerks without coordination, spins meaninglessly, and thrashes in blind panic. That moment, its discipline vanishes. Its instincts betray it. What follows thereafter is a disorderly exhibition of decline— so loudly exposed and irredeemably imprudent. Such display is no longer exclusive to biology. It is unmistakably playing out in Kogi East’s political space as 2027 inches closer.
Across the district, a self-destructive order is revealing. Elected office holders burdened by records that cannot withstand honest scrutiny are once again scrambling for relevance. These are men who held mandate but delivered mediocrity. They occupied offices but evaded impact. And, instead of accountability, they have chosen amplification in optimism that, noise will substitute for performance, and that, memory can be bullied into silence. Their conduct now bears in entirety, the hallmarks of terminal desperation. There is a sudden flood of “empowerment” optics, choreographed charity, and endless afternoon niceties designed to manufacture applause. However, the contradiction is glaring: a people drenched in gestures, yet starved of growth. What is paraded as empowerment has produced no enduring wealth, no viable economic base, no structural progress. It is relief without reform; an elaborate recycling of dependency. The Igala/Bassa people have been given visibility without value, tokens without transformation.
On the heels of such gross misconduct comes a glaring absence of legislative credibility. Check the official records of the National Assembly, the names of these lawmakers are conspicuously missing from where it matters most— bills sponsored, motions moved and debates led. Even more damning is the vacuum in oversight. But in one breath, they announce projects, federal interventions, constituency projects with fanfare which in nutshell are never carried out.
And so, in a desperate bid to rewrite failure, these lawmakers peddle pseudo achievements such as bills they never sponsored, motions they never moved, and interventions they never secured. Facts are mutilated. Records are fabricated. Reality is bent until it resembles fiction. That is how calculative, exaggerating and deceptive they are.
At the centre of this unraveling is a more sinister project. Those who rode into office on the platform of the ruling machinery, fed by its structure and, legitimised by its machinery are now covertly mobilising against it. Having discovered that their underperformance may shut the door against their return, they have chosen sabotage over self-examination.
In their warped calculus, loyalty has expired. They now recast the leadership of Yahaya Bello and Ahmed Usman Ododo as enemies of their ambition. Within their strongholds, they erect parallel party councils—shadow structures engineered to fracture cohesion and confuse the grassroots.
Their message to supporters is as convenient as it is false: that Bello is plotting a Senate bid and seeks to eliminate competition. That he intends to dictate political outcomes in Kogi East; that their looming rejection is the product of grand conspiracy.
But this narrative collapses under the weight of truth. What is forcing them out is not Bello. It is not Ododo. It is their empty, underwhelming and indefensible record. It is the awakening of a people who have grown weary of recycled failure. They are not being edged out by design. They are being rejected by consequence. They are trapped firmly and finally in the web of their own failure.
Yet, their desperation does not stop there, it mutates. Those openly denied return tickets do not retreat, they reroute. They drift into alternative platforms not to demonstrate popularity, but to spend recklessly and induce their way into relevance. They litigate endlessly, dragging the system into needless court battles in a bid to manufacture legitimacy where none exists.
And when the borrowed funds dry up; when the bank loans that powered their illusion are exhausted, their frustration turns outward. They lash out at the very people they once courted, accusing the Igala and Bassa communities of being responsible for their failures. It is the final refuge of failed ambition: blaming the electorate for refusing deception.
One episode captures this confusion vividly. An aspirant recently pursued an uncanny alliance with the Okun bloc—an arrangement devoid of ideological clarity, driven purely by opportunism. It collapsed almost instantly. Today, its chief promoter stands politically stranded, and caught between ambition and rejection. After campaigning on illusion, he now carries the clearest verdict: his political currency has expired.
Yet, the theatre deepens. What is unfolding is akin to calculated attempt to stage a democratic coup; a subversion of party structure, manipulation of process, and a quiet rebellion against constituted authority, all dressed in the language of participation.
Beneath this comes the most jarring hypocrisy.
Some of these self-styled saviours cannot manage justice within their own firms. They owe staff salaries, delay payments without reason, and when they eventually pay, they mutilate earnings through needless deductions, handing over crumbs long after the month has expired. Yet, these same figures suddenly transform into merchants of generosity.
Armed with questionable bank loans, they descend on Kogi East, spraying money in desperate bursts to simulate popularity. But, the unavoidable question is: how do they intend to repay these loans?
The answer is chilling in its clarity: this is not service. It is investment. A calculated attempt to capture public office as a repayment channel, to feast on public funds under the cover of governance.
Even more disappointing, the so-called new entrants, I mean those who ought to represent renewal have merely perfected the old rot. In place of ideology, they offer inducement. In place of vision, they distribute cash. They share money today, disappear tomorrow, and return only when another election cycle demands fresh deception. Their “empowerment” expires the moment ambition is interrupted. And still, amidst this chaos, not one coherent manifesto emerges. Not one structured plan. Not one measurable pathway to development.
To further expose their fear of competence, a dangerous counter-narrative is now being sponsored against those who dare to campaign with clear manifestoes. Such candidates are branded as “untamed”, accused of threatening established political structures, and portrayed as risks to party stability. They are falsely painted as individuals who would “destroy” what has been built.
But these attacks do not weaken such candidates. They expose the fragility of those who make them. When vision becomes a threat, it is mediocrity that is on trial. When ideas are feared, it is incompetence that stands naked.
The truth is simple: the global terrain has moved on. Leadership today is no longer about noise or patronage. It is about knowledge, capacity, and the ability to assemble the best minds for collective progress. Societies that advance are those that reward competence, not convenience.
Yet, in Kogi East, these political merchants understand a painful truth: the emergence of even one genuinely visionary individual will mark the end of their dominance. It will dismantle their cycle of dependency, expose their emptiness, and close the chapter on their opportunism.
And so, they fight such individuals with every breath they possess. They resist ideas. They attack vision. They fear competence.
Layered dangerously over this decay is the rise of religious manipulation. A toxic narrative is being amplified; that faith, rather than competence, should determine leadership. It is not faith. It is fanaticism weaponised for control. It is division packaged as devotion.
Add to this a deeply entrenched culture of electoral manoeuvres where elections are treated as battlegrounds for manipulation rather than platforms for genuine choice and the crisis becomes complete.
In all of this, the people have been reduced, in their thinking, to mere instruments. They see us as tools for acquisition, not partners in progress. Such a system in convulsion!
But Kogi East is no longer passive. There is a rising consciousness—a refusal to be deceived, divided, or diminished. The people are watching keenly, remembering more accurately, and questioning more fearlessly. The old tricks are collapsing under their own weight. The lesson of the dying cockroach is brutal but clear: frantic motion does not reverse fate. Exposure does not preserve relevance. Noise does not substitute for survival. So it will be for those who mistake deception for intelligence, betrayal for strategy, and desperation for strength.
The moral verdict is final: when leaders abandon truth, distort reality, divide their people, and pursue power as entitlement rather than trust, they do not secure their future. They extinguish it.
Come 2027, Kogi East will not merely vote. It will deliver a reckoning. And in that reckoning, only those grounded in integrity, competence, and genuine vision will stand. The age of desperate power opportunists thriving on illusion is closing. In the full glare of an awakened electorate, only substance will endure.
– Dauda Musa writes from Abuja.
