Under God’s spiritual calendar, there is a time and season for everything… “A time to be born and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to harvest; A time to throw up and a time to throw down…”
In this conversation the last of this epic words of inspiration is very instructive to the people of the geocentric State at the confluence of Nigeria’s Rivers Niger and Benue.
The month of November 2019 will mark the beginning of another watershed of our cyclic political calendar in Nigeria. For this reason, the ethnic nationalities of Kogi State of Nigeria shall once again be in the eye of another epic storm because it is the season to decide the next tenant of their controversial Lugard House for another four years.
The political story of the State was put on divine reset in what one can clearly look back to as a throwing-down and a throwing-up of two leadership orders – the old and the new, which the people read or misread as an unusual divine act of God, heralding the demise of foundational civilian Governor, Prince Abubakar Audu, of blessed memory.
Like in most political transition, it was a season of mourning for some as it was a season of celebration for others across the State back then.
Four years down the line, we can not say for obvious reasons weather the crescendo or the ovation of rejoicing is sustainable, as the singing and rejoicing gradually mellowed into a cacophony voices for the celebrants and the mourners. Many lessons have been learned and many yet unlearned in this macabre journey of statehood but like all things under the sun there is time and season for everything – a time to plant and a time to harvest.
November 2019 seems to present a perfect harvest season for the people of Kogi State and their political horticulturists in chief or mischief and their collaborators in the four-year political dogma in in review in the State.
It’s time for an acid test for the unending controversies about alleged unheeded cries of Civil Servants in the State, whose tales in the last four years is akin to the years of the old testament story of the Hebrew children in bondage in Egypt due to unending wage bill manipulations which has led to untimely deaths, broken dreams and broken homes with implications for out-of-school children population on the streets of the State, with dire consequences for society.
What about the sour state of labour relations with government amongst other unsettled feuds that present one with a sordid slave-master relationship of the 21st century.
To contemporary students of post modern politics the script of the ideal people-centred democratic principle has gained a new perspective in line with the Marxist school of thought about official absolutism and how
“Power corrupts absolutely and absolute power corrupts absolutely…”
The “Glass house of Lugard” must be goading itself for what seems to be its first referendum by the real people of Kogi State.
The saying that “Those the gods want to destroy first they make mad” seems to have pictured November 2019 as the absolute season of political reckoning.
As online and off-line chronicles about the State are in the negative rather than the positive almost all through the years in review about the gods of Kogi workers, dead and alive; the god of the rising out-of-school kid population; the god of widows of Civil Servants; the gods of the numerous victims of bloodletting by political assassins and kidnappers; the gods of the hungry and jobless.
Perhaps it is time to test and count the votes of “masquerades” in air conditioned limousines. The voice of the people and not the voice of masquerades are the voice of God. INEC must let the peoples’ voices through their votes count, they mustn’t be requited by political pirates and buccaneers of Kogi State in the November Governorship election in the State.
Together we can cast down and together we can throw up a peoples’ development oriented leadership. “The people rejoice when the righteous is on the throne and the people mourn when the wicked mounts the throne…”
An ode and a requiem for the people’s referendum come November 2019.
– Alew Adejo Taleeb
