Hitherto, Kogi State has been badly managed in barely four years by Governor Yahaya Bello with attendant humanitarian crisis and social malaise at its peak.
It is traumatic to any rational mind to begin to think of humongous resources of about N400 billion accrued to the state within the time under review without a modicum of achievement.
The duo’s antics has created a farcical situation in the state to the bewilderment of an educated and a democratised mind. It further leaves one wondering if the governor who his admirers named “The white lion”, would one day seek people’s votes in a civil manner.
As the gubernatorial election comes up in a matter of days, the chromosomal combination of Yahaya Bello and Edward Onoja is not only calamitous, but terrible on the finances of Kogi State. Having the duo at the goal post for another four years is suicidal and there should be nothing short of stopping them on November 16, 2019 at all cost.
From the empirical evidence, that is, how the governor – Yahaya Bello and the ‘de facto’ Governor – Edward Onoja suspended the normal administrative structure of handling a heterogeneous State like Kogi to begin to do the unthinkable in barely four years should be the barometer in judging them before taking them to the golgotha on November 16.
Is it a decrepit civil service, where salaries are owed or a civil service without payment of leave allowance; a civil service without local and Foreign training; a civil service without promotion for Civil Servants; a civil service without career progression; worse still, a state without a democractic local government administration.
It is normal for the governor to begin doing damage control before the D-day, but whatever effort being put together by him, or his numerous proxies would end in futility. The electorate’s rejection of Bello and the APC is not only unanimous, but absolute.
Very worrisome in the many fault steps is the parochial approach to his campaign that is disintegrating the state right now. How can the governor be promoting an ethnic agenda in a state where he comes from is the minutest tribe? Those who sold the dummy to him as a way of capturing the second tenure have misled him. They have threatened that the opposition PDP governorship candidate should not campaign in Kogi Central where Yahaya Bello comes from. As a sitting a Governor, he shouldn’t have condoned divisive tendencies coming from his own camp.
Because the government of the day in Kogi has nothing to campaign with, it has resorted to the use of thugs who are daily unleashing mayhem on citizens.
The resort to thuggery is the devil’s alternative, but the power of the electorate would tame those thugs by the Grace of God.
Secondly, the governor promised the western Senatorial district of governorship in 2024 which has become Senator Smart Adeyemi’s campaign bait wherever he goes. Severally, Senator Smart had told the Western Senatorial electorate that it was only Yahaya Bello that could ensure that power gets to the West.
One is not at a loss that Bello chose to use power rotation as his campaign strategy, but if he has performed well; if he has advocated for good governance and if he was a living sample to it, his power rotation message would have been better.
As at today, he chose to vilify his predecessors particularly, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris and Idris Wada, but it is common knowledge that achievements of his predecessors are still available till date. Government business is continuum, can the Governor tell Kogites those projects which he inherited from Idris Wada and were completed?
All the projects which Wada could not complete before leaving office have been abandoned. The governor never complete them nor initiate his own and seeking second tenure is better imagined than said, not to talk of voting Bello on November 16.
– Samson Atekojo Usman is the Special Adviser, Media and Publicity of Ujache Igala Association
