Kogi Socio-cultural Group, Ujache Igala, has stated that Kogi State governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello is the brain behind late minister, James Ocholi’s non replacement seven months after his demise for political reasons.
Reacting to Governor Bello’s Director General of Media and Publicity, Kingsley Fanwo’s describing the group’s protest to the Villa on Thursday in Abuja as antics of jobless people who were carrying out vested interests of some unscrupulous politicians, the group explained that the state governor was surreptitiously working against appointment of an Igala man into the federal executive council to ensure no one could challenge his misdeeds at that level.
In a press release issued in Abuja by the group’s head of Media and Publicity, Atek’ojo Samson Usman, it urged Kogi State governor to be tolerant, insisting that the peaceful protest was in the interest of the people particularly when it was obvious that all appointments made so far by Buhari led administration have not captured anyone from the eastern Senatorial flank of the state.
“Alhaji Yahaya Bello was deliberately working against appointment of Igala person as Minister, so that he can have a field day, each time he goes to the villa where he continue to shield his misdeeds.
“The peaceful protest to the Villa was to draw attention of President Buhari to the fact that Kogi state is being marginalised. That there was no replacement of a minister in the federal executive council seven months after. So, why is Bello panicking?”, the statement added.
The statement reminded the governor that “appointment of a minister who would sit in Federal Executive Council is a constitutional right of a state, hence, his utterances that Kogi is not in a hurry to have a ministerial slot filled was a display of crass ignorance of statutory books and the workings of participatory democracy”.
They urged those involved in day-to-day running of Kogi state to learn fast.
It further condemned the divide and rule tactics of the state governor, stressing that “a situation where the governor visits Aso Rock with his personal interest on the right hand, and that of state matters on the left and when his personal interest fails, he would then present that of the state is a disservice to Kogites“
They urged him to be magnanimous with the fact that providence brought him to power. They frowned at as his style of leadership, particularly “his sacrificing of the major tribe in the state on the altar of parochialism which has cracked the state more than ever in the last 25 years of the past administrations”.
“When late Audu died, it took a week to name Bello as a replacement in a questionable circumstances which the legal conundrum continue to stare us on the face till now, that same person will sit in the comfort of his office to say, the state is not in a hurry because he wants to decimate Igalas politically.
“How could such thing happen?”, the group queried.
