Your Excellency sir, recent pronouncements of your appointees as the States Assembly election draws near is quite disturbing and worrisome in terms of its tendency to unleash violence during and after the election especially in Kogi West and particularly in Okunland.
The peaceful conduct during and after the Presidential and National Assembly elections in Okunland is a reflection of who the people in this part of Kogi State are.
Your disappointment on the dismal performance of your candidates especially that of the Senate is understandable considering the resources you invested in the venture.
What more can you do? After deducting from the incomes of political appointees in Kogi West to purchase form and expression of interest for a particular candidate, it is reasonable to expect positive returns.
The problem whoever, is that most of your appointees only sold you dummies with the impression that they are fully on ground with the people. That they failed didn’t come as a surprise to many who are really in touch with the people.
Okun people based their judgement and decision to vote not just on the propaganda of your appointees but the reality on ground.
It will be deceitful on my part not to acknowledge the modest achievements of your administration since inauguration but considering the resources your government is privileged to have accessed, performance has been woeful.
The desperation of your appointees is replicated in your own penchant to promise what you know cannot be delivered.
For instance, you pronounced a commitment to deliver votes more than the registered voters in Kogi State; that is dubious.
Your Excellency sir, you promised a clean sweep of all elective positions in Kogi State in your famous 3/3, 9/9 and 25/25 declaration which is a comical display of political naivety. Established political masters like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu with decades of political sagacity and entrenched structure will not make such bogus submission not to talk of a political novice as Your Excellency who have not won a major election before.
Okun people are educated, reasonable and urbane who have in the past resisted attempts by any Governor to impose certain individuals on them for certain political offices.
Your preferred candidate was a beneficiary of a similar resistance when the Governor of the State then attempted to do what you tried but failed to do in the last National Assembly election.
Shutting Okun appointees out of Lugard House on your instruction is not only childish but draconian. Now that the jobs of Okun appointees in your administration are at risk if they fail to win their units and wards, Your Excellency have indirectly and subtly approved for your appointees, any foul means to achieve results.
If violence is unleashed in the course of the election on the 9th day of March, 2019, Okun people will place the culpability on you sir.
Thugs and hooligans are being brought in to Okunland by your appointees, Traditional rulers are being harassed and coerced to give your candidates unfair advantage amidst intimidation of the opposition.
Your Excellency, election is not war and it is a conviction we hold dear in Okunland and it is my plea sir that you don’t force or encourage this alien concept in Okunland.
Remember sir, the positive role Okun people played in the process that saw you emerge runner up in the primary then while even your own people abandoned and never believed in your aspiration. Even if you have not compensated our kind gesture appropriately, kindly refrain from putting Okunland in turmoil because of election. It is only God Almighty that will say a thing and it will surely happen. You are a mere mortal and it is advisable you refrain from trying to play God.
Your emphasis now in my humble opinion, Your Excellency should be how to reduce the pain and agony of Kogites due to misplaced priorities and twisted sense of value.
Sir, there is still ample time for you to do the right thing for Kogites for a possible second term which as it stands now is a long shot.
Immunity against local and international prosecution for crimes especially that against humanity will expire one day which you must put into consideration in all you do.
The absurdity witnessed in Kogi Central and Kogi East cannot be successfully reenacted in Kogi West especially in Okunland. For those strategizing to do so, the repercussions will be catastrophic for them.
To appointees on do or die mission, no obedience to any unlawful order is worth the lives of another Okun person, don’t allow yourselves to be used as agents of destabilization in Okunland.
Traditional rulers are called upon to do all within their power to prevent violence before, during and after the election on the 9th day of March, 2019.
The unique feature of democracy is the freedom of every voter to exercise their civic responsibility as they deem fit and no action or pronouncement should infringe on their rights.
– Posi Botun
A Concerned West Kogite.
