By Stanley Ajileye.
Today, it is going to be another mega walk for Dino Melaye, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Kogi Governorship election scheduled for November 11, 2023.
Similar walk took place in Kabba, earlier this month.
As much as the organizers tried to keep the Kabba walk in low key, the Friday, August 11 Walk for Dino overshot the runway of the micro plan.
Invitation has gone out, inviting only one person per ward. The reason according to members of the planning committee, was the unwillingness to cause a clog on the narrow roads of Kabba and also, the walk was designed to be a condolence walk with Senator Dino Melaye, candidate of the People’s Democratic Party and obviously, the most popular contender for the governor seat of Kogi State in the election scheduled for November 11, 2023.
Senator Melaye’s schedule, included an official condolence visit to the family house of Hon. Olaiya Moses Olobatoke, candidate of PDP in last February National Assembly election, who died recently.
The walk which took off at the township stadium in Kabba, saw the mammoth crowd through Obaro Way to the Olobatoke’s family House, where prayers were offered.
The walk glaringly attested to the popularity of Senator Dino Melaye in Kogi West. It was prayer galore for Dino, as motorists and their Passengers stuck their heads out of their vehicle for a shout out to Dino.
Men and women came out of their homes to hail Dino and prayed for his successful in the November 11 election.
“We are praying for you, we are praying that God will stand with you, to deliver us” was a common saying that became a recurring decimal, all through the walk.
Truly, the people of Kogi has tasted bitterness in the last seven and a half years.
Before this government came in 2015, salaries which happens to be the grease of the economy of a civil service state like Kogi, were paid as at when due.
However, when Governor Yahaya Bello came in, the first thing he tampered with was workers emoluments.
He started with an unending screening exercise which left most workers without salary for well over two years, during which the words *clear* and *unclear* were introduced into the bag of vocabulary of Kogi State Civil Service. Many bread winners died as a result of the avoidable tensions deliberately created by the state government.
The story was told of an assistant director in Kogi Civil Service, who, in a bid to feed his wife and four children, entered Lokoja market and stole 1kg pack of semovita when the seller was busy attending to other customers.
He was said to be walking home with the semovita when a friend saw him and gave him a ride.
During conversation, his conscience pricked him, and he told his friend what he just did.
The friend insisted they return the stuff to the seller. His friend apologized to the seller, explaining what his friend was going through. The seller allegedly dashed him the semovita, and added two sachets of spaghetti for him and his family. His friend equally bought him more stuffs that could take his family for at least a month.
Rather than being happy, the man was weeping.
His friend returned him home to enjoy the food stuff.
At home he told his surprised wife that he ran into his friend who bought him the food stuffs.
The wife dashed to the kitchen to cook while the man remained moody in the living room. When the food was done and the children served, the wife called her husband to the dinner, but he was dead. He was one of the many victims if the unending screening exercise.
At the end of the exercise which almost lasted the first term of governor Bello’s four years, more than forty percent of the workforce of the state were weeded off.
The irony however is this: despite the heavy downsize of the state’s work force, Governor Bello, still finds it difficult to pay correct salary.
The state government collected several bailouts and loan, with nothing to show.
Till date some directors in the state civil service, particularly those under the local government, still earns as low as 26,000 naira per month, bringing Kogi State to the bottom of the ladder, as the most impoverished state in Nigeria.
Beyond this, Kogi State is recorded as the lowest, in infrastructural development.
The only area where Kogi State has excelled in the last seven years is in human right abuse. And of course, pre election and election violence and manipulation.
Since the present government got to office in Kogi State, there had never been an election. It has always been executive selection.
During a purported Local Government election, the integrity of the State’s Electoral umpire was heavily compromised. Election materials were sent to only one polling unit per ward for video shoots.
Political appointees are always under strict mandate to push in, premeditated figures as poll results.
It was such act, that gave Kogi Central a towering figure far above Kogi East in the 2019 gubernatorial election; a figure that could not be replicated during last February election because of the use of BVAS.
During the last presidential and National Assembly election, the atrocities of the state government was played to the fore, when the state government rolled out bulldozers to cut federal roads that leads to the home town of Akpoti Natacha, the undoubtedly strongest contender for senatorial seat in Kogi East. The announced figure at that election is still a subject of litigation, just like the APC’s primary that produced the party’s Mr. Ododo (a younger cousin to the governor) as flag bearer in the coming governorship election.
The announcement of Ododo’s name has sent tongues wagging, as such brazen insensitivity was never heard anywhere in the country, where in the face of the heterogeneous make up of our various states, a governor will seek to hand power over to his cousin.
Various tales have been advanced as promoter of such brazen insensitivity, key amongst which is the fear of accountability, which would necessitate the need for the governor to assume a new toga, as defacto governor, after the expiration of his term January next year. This desire is being pursued with reckless desperation.
If there is any candidate the governor of Kogi State will not want as successor, it is Senator Dino Melaye, who detested the huge corruption under this administration, and asserted that, the prison uniform of the governor is already with tailor.
Dino is a tough electoral meat to Governor Bello. He remains the only contender that can humble the governor in election.
Governor Bello had once failed, in his bid at recalling Dino from the Senate between 2015 and 2019.
In 2019 inspite of his incarceration, Dino still humbled Bello in the Senatorial election, of Kogi West.
That Dino is popular and connected is obvious, and this is the menace of Bello.
Dino’s Mega Walk in Kabba made it clear that his Popularity is soaring in the same velocity with which that of governor Bello ebbs.
Majority of road-siders during the walk in Kabba, hailed Dino Melaye as ‘ *Oko Yaya* ‘ (meaning the only one Governor Bello is afraid of)
Around the market square in Kabba, market women compelled Senator Dino to stop. They mounted a stage for him to address them.
It was a strenuous task for security men to get Dino to the stage amidst heads that looks like sand at the seashore.
The women sang and danced their hearts out.
Songs like “Iya yi ti to ge” (Meaning: Enough of this suffering).
“Obinrin ni yoo gbe, bokunrin ba ko Dino sile” (Meaning: If men betray Dino, we women will not) rent the air.
The occasion at the market square was not without the usual Dinoic interjections in spiritual songs and jabs.
His concluding song was: “APC ti se wa, APC ti ko wa je, Awa sati pada lehin won, PDP maa ko wa lo.” (Meaning: APC has wronged and cheated us, we have desisted from following them, We move on with PDP) to which the market women danced.
