As the Kogi Governorship election draws close, I would want all lovers of Kogi as a State to try to add a voice or two. Even if they cannot talk, they should at least write. They should see how they can make issues of Kogi State.
Kogi as a State right now is really an issue on its own. A bad one.
Kogi is bad today because even as one cannot blame God for all that happened in 2015, as well there is this disturbing silence on the path of many good men and women over there.
So therefore, as the Kogi Governorship election draws close, I would want all to take Kogi to heart.
I would want the campaigns to be based not on ethnicity or on “N2,000 per vote” or on number of cubes of maggi or bulbs of onion that are hoped to be received per vote from anybody that may be sharing on election day; but on issues.
It may interest us to know that one of the good bold voices in Kogi State by name Austin Okai just returned from DSS custody recently after spending 21 days in detention in the course of the recently held general elections, having been accused by the State Governor of inciting the public against him (Governor Bello); a means to silence a critic that has become a good thorn in the bad flesh of the powers that be in the State.
Clearly, by that act of detention alone, the government is saying it will not and it does tolerate criticism; yet in a democratic setting.
The fact of the matter is that this alone points to the undoubted-anymore truth that more detention facilities in Kogi would need to be built and the existing ones expanded ahead of November because I personally trust in all sincerity that many good bold voices will on the instruction of the Government go down in such detention facilities as the Governorship elections draw close, worst still during the campaigns and as usual with the latest strategy of the APC, a night to the election day.
That said, the journey to rescue Kogi and return it to the path of prosperity would be a difficult one but it is unavoidable.
Kogi must be liberated. Any other agenda is an act of deception to self, to good conscience and to the good of the people of Kogi.
The Government may have silenced the people of the State with self-centeredness, with “no or 5% salary”, with hunger, with poverty, with anti-critics field watchmen and women; but it cannot silence the undying million voices of a good bold minority or a few bold men and women who would rather rot in detention than not speak and write truth to power with even every breath that they breathe.
The days ahead would really be trying days. The days ahead may be risky. No doubt about that. But it is a risk not to take risk, especially when the risk is a good unavoidable risk.
In the biblical days of Moses, For Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go, was not a joke, even now we don’t expect a joke, but we expect that with the overdue pains and sincere lasting will of the people, with God and with the law if well applied on both the Government and the critic; victory for the people against “Pharaoh” is sure eventually, even though his ministers (appointees) scare us and mock us and flaunt might in our ranting restless troubled faces, both in terms of finance and in terms of “power to do and undo”, in every day that pass by.
In closing, I make bold to opine that Kogi will rise again. Come November 2019, Kogi will definitely be on that path of rising again when the people go to the ballot to elect their new Governor.
#KogiDeservesBetter
– Issa Itopa Lucky
