History will always repeat itself because we humans have always fail to learn from history.
The November 16th, 2019 governorship elections in kogi will go down in the Guinness Book of record as the most manipulated, most state backed violence ridden elections of our time. The All Progressive Congress (APC) defiled all logical reasoning, ethics and political values to to force tyranny against the whims and caprice of the Kogi people.
Saturday’s primitive impositions of both the governorship and the Senatorial candidates are reminiscences of the late Afrobeat king, the Abami Eda-Fela Kuti hit song, “Which kind of election be this”, “This election na him worst pass” once again re-surfaced last Saturday.
This also evoked nostalgia, about some of my poems under Abacha’s tyranny: “The Jungle of Injustice, Abuja Pillagers, Talons of Wanderers” and it could also not be far away from the piece of the German poet, C.P Cavity; Cavity titled his poem “Expecting the Babarians.” All these poems have common elegiac expressions, the failure of the state.
Little wonder, the Buhari dictatorship is warming up for an Act of the Parliament to subject Nigerians to the hangman’s nose in this dawn of the 21st Century when nations are fast moving towards protecting the lives of their citizens. This government is warming up to hang those it claimed brought her to power. One also remember the days when President Muhammadu Buhari and Lai Muhammed were spokespersons of the opposition, and for their parties.
Plato, The Republic, succinctly put it, that the mass of the people, vote dictators to power, and they become demi-gods to oppress and dehumanised those whom they used to come to power. According to Lord Acton; “power corrupt, absolute power corrupt absolutely.” But power is equally transient-it has a beginning and an end.
The proliferation of arms in Kogi state as of today is unimaginable! We witnessed the unleashing of arms against the people, by the state and her sponsored agents. What this portends is that crime rate will increase in Kogi and it’s environ. Further implications are that the fragile nature of Kogi will continue unabated for the inhabitants and those who travel through that route.
This was the scenario in Rivers state under Peter Odili, General Olusegun Obasanjo and the then ruling party, the PDP. The “boys” were armed for the purpose of elections, but till today, these arms could not be withdrawn, rather it has increased in circulation and more havoc to the nation, even to those who promoted it ab initio. So, the Kogi situation has also become a dreaded monster confronting us all.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) behind the curtains, will now be regretting her own demise and primitive display of power for 16 years.
Did Audu Ogbe not even once boasted that the PDP will rule Nigeria for 60 years?
The rest is history, but history is repeating itself even worst under the so-called progressive APC.
Is this the next level promised by the APC?
Are some of the reasons for the primitive hate speech proposed regulation not unfolding?
What do we expect in 2023 if things continue this way?
The life of citizens in Nigeria have become worthless. Our leadership predators, the roads, the schools, the hospitals, unpaid salaries and wages, primitive looting of our common wealth, collapsed businesses and countless of ills have reduced the people to a state of despair. Life expectancy has further declined to abysmal level.
Yahaya Bello in the last four years have demonstrated that he lacks the capacity to govern; intheory and in practice-he has failed. This regime has received well over forty billion Naira (N40bn) bailout funds, about three hundred billion Naira (N300) Federal allocation aside from internally generated revenue (IGR).
The people of Kogi have nothing to show for these resources except abject poverty, unpaid salaries and wages, death of civil servants, other citizens, decimated educational system, rotten health facilities, dehumanised citizenry across the state. These and many more, are the attributes of a failed state within the larger failed system.
Nothing, nothing at all have worked in Kogi state except under the late Prince Abubakar Audu. All other governments have been gangrene sores to the destiny of the state and her people since the creation in 1991 by the maradonic evil general Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) who institutionalised corruption in this country. In all circumstances, Kogi has been the orphaned child in the jungle of illusionary island- without hope, without light to indicate the end of the dark tunnel.
For the citizens and supporters of what is going on in Kogi are all part of the karmic debts. Even the onlookers, Martin Luther King Jr. of memory situated the present happening in Kogi as: “Every Onlooker is either a coward or a traitor… he who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helped to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
Therefore, what goes around must certainly comes around. Our actions and inactions are seeds for tomorrow. They will definitely germinate and multiply in folds.
The making of a nation is a global political phenomenon, homo sapiens, wherever are their habitats evinces the same and general characteristics; hence, will assert their natural responsibility when the time comes.
For change is the law of life and those who moves along with the wind of change are certain to be the best of their time.
– Comrade Taiwo Otitolaye
Executive Director,
Community Outreach for Development and Welfare Advocacy (CODWA)
19, Unity Road, Ilorin, Kwara state.
Tel: +2348055346770
WhatsApp: +2349068869594
Twitter: @otitolayet
