The inauguration of the 9th National Assembly has come and gone, every focus has been shifted towards Kogi state governorship election. The Elephants, the Hippopotamus and the big Sharks are beginning to come out, but one thing is undisputable and that is the clear fact that there is a King in this jungle who is the White lion and who ever must take over Lugard house must first tame this Lion.
In the last three months a lot of articles have been written claiming that the governor has lost its strong relationship with the presidency and that there are verifiable chances that he won’t get an automatic ticket of his party APC.
This storytelling has always sounded funny to me. The governor may have lost touch with the presidency but the presidency is not the one voting during the primaries. The presidency is not the one voting during the general elections. The presidency is only going to serve as a monitoring team which has little or no influence on the forth coming election.
The APC on the other hand might have shown how desperate it is willing to go to hold on to power in the last general elections but I am not sure the party will be willing to repeat the same stand in the Kogi and Bayelsa election, especially on the grounds that the whole world is watching. It is therefore a complete state affair – only monitored by INEC and other external body.
So it is self deceit if any body or any aspirant, or any political party is encouraging it self with the fall out between the presidency and the state governor.
And rather than going to the drawing board to energise their campaign strategies and market their products they are hoping the ticket doesn’t get to the incumbent governor.
Some of us might not be full fleshed politicians, but we have been involved in the campaign for good governance for more than a decade now and unapologetically, I will say that with what I have seen so far there is no opposition in Kogi state yet, rather, what we have are opposition on social media and if the election is conducted today Yahaya Bello will win in a landslide like he said after his last meeting with the President.
There is no way you will win an incumbent governor who has been campaigning for a second term right from his first day in office by remaining in Abuja and Lagos, holding meeting with self acclaimed leaders and stakeholders who do not even know what the people are going through at the grassroots. Neither can you win or gain the support of the people by remaining in the city and donating money to groups, associations and unions that do not have any political influence or are of no value to the forth coming election.
The Yahaya Bello led government might have failed, but it knows the importance of building a strong relationship with the masses in the forth coming elections and it has been doing every thing possible to win its way either by crook or by hook.
And yet all our so called liberation aspirants have remained in their luxury with the hope that they will kick start immediately they win the primaries.
It is even a pity that most of their so called media team are only good in sharing pictures, boring biographies of their aspirant and also writing rejoinders to my articles.
None of the so called 62 aspirant has been able to provide us with any comprehensive blue print with well structured approaches, policies and engagements that such aspirant intends to hit the ground running with if voted into office. Rather,what we see every day is just a review of personal profile, working experience, bio data, date of employment and enrollment into different and unnecessary organizations and most of all a parade of different kinds of Agbada. Yet you want to win an incumbent governor who is willing to stop at nothing to remain in office – please wake up.
Our present challenge as a state is not just our inability to get it right in the last 16 years, but our inability to ensure that we have a government that is solely committed to the development of the people and the state. We are in a dire need of a government that is responsible, very responsive and has all the needed administrative ideas that can rebuild the economy of the state, rejigged its security apparatus, encourage its Agricultural sector, revive its education and alleviate the common man from this pandemic poverty that cuts across the state.
Let it not just be defeating the incumbent only, let it also aspire towards meeting the daily yearnings of the people and towards installing a government which will provide and attend to the needs of the people than the present government has done in the last four years.
Taming the Lion does not call for battle and war as it seems, rather it calls for providing the society a better administrative blue print that will address the entire problem faced by the helpless masses of Kogi state. It calls for a more engaging campaign; educating and keeping the people properly informed of what is really at stake in the forth coming election if they vote in the incumbent governor.
In conclusion, I will say let our aspirants come out of their shell and give us an issue base campaign by coming out and sharing with us what they want to do and how they intend to salvage the state from its present suffering and underdevelopment? This will help us the masses to choose properly and rather than remain in Abuja/Lagos and hope that they will pick up after the primaries.
The Kogi election is serious than they think it is and the only way to tame the Lion is to get sincerely and strongly involved so that the people can truly know who means well and who is really out to exploit them like the present government has done in the last four years.
– Jacob Unekwu Agada, the author, EBULÉJONU writes from Idah, Kogi state.
