Fellow Kogites, another election cycle is here, an election cycle that is supposedly a celebration of democracy but exploited at the caprices of few tyrants ravishing in oppression. As usual, they are spitting fire and threatening brimstone, and instead of preparing to decide who should lead us from the polling unit, we might seek solace from the wrath of an emperor whose forte isn’t to deepen democracy or to protect the citizens but to send everyone below six feet and inherit the state
As it stands, we neither know whose blood shall the murderers quench thirst nor have a cue about whose flesh they intend to feed on. In the last election, it was Daniel Usman and Mrs Salome Abu. 2023 is here. The cannibals had registered their presence from Ihima, and with such vicious utterances, we do not know who is next.
Prior to 2015 general elections, some of us advocated a paradigm shift in leadership. We felt that, no Kogite is more a Kogite than any Kogite. So, for equity, fairness and transparency, we wanted inclusiveness for all. But how befouled had the genuine advocacy become! The young lad who rode on the horse-back of dead man’s victory is terribly daft. He is power drunk feeling unrestrained. Instead of consolidating on existing foundation of democracy, he destroyed it and erected a system with which Buccaneers, election thieves and murderers continually rapes our democracy. However, there is still hope in rotational leadership.
May the armed militant in the Lugard house never happen to us again, Amen!
The commencement of the fourth republic never had folks like Yahaya Bello in conception. By default, Kogites did not subscribe to such marauding and grisly style. This is because, the tenet of democratic society advocates people-oriented leadership, not the brigand-like wherein, one man is so unimaginably extravagant. His policies and actions are practically anti-people’s. With guns and bullets, he gruesomely stripped the citizens of every rights to freedom and choice. He soars with our common wealth but hope and survival to the people is a distant illusion. How uncanny can one be!
These days, his accomplices lures him into anything idea, and, in the end they cash out big time. At first, he was cajoled into the presidential race by profiteers of the transactional government. The boat carrying them on that trip of vanity capsized upon take-off but the emperor was so drowned in allurement of the flurry of Nigerian super stars who came to Kogi state for Kingsley dinners and mouth-watering cheques.
Well, they carted away our common wealth but the rank and files in the presidential race showed Bello an exit door even before the commencement of the primaries, what a shame! As if that was not all, the homecoming of the defeated war-lord was staged in the media, but guess what? Those present at the ceremony were prospective leaders who are not in the good book of the people, but bank on the emperor to ascend the throne of leadership. From that hoax welcome party, the list of what APC Kogi presented as candidates was compiled and codenamed UNITY LIST.
For the record, every aspirant who won APC’s ticket in the state emerged from the unity list. But what Kogites did not know is that, those candidates signed a secret pact that would inadvertently tears the confluence city apart. This is still a top secret, and l dare to bet with my last penny, a lot may not recover from the rude shock of what awaits, except Yahaya Bello and his Unity list is distanced like heaven and earth in the forthcoming coming elections.
The recent Ihima threats and uncouth utterances of the governor is a symbol of what is to come. It characterizes his desperate quest to turn Kogi to personal establishment and unreadiness to give democracy a chance. Although, he might leave Lugard house in 2023, those he has anointed as aspirants are those with antecedents riddled in character flaws and amorality. Neither the emperor nor those stooges bears a mark of good judgement on our aspirations. At best, they show up in guise of progressive minds but in nutshell, they are after our common resources and Yahaya Bello is willing to kill everyone to pave way for them. If not, in this age and dispensation, how can a sane minded leader utter derogatory statements such as GYB’s? Of whom is he contemptuous that the continued existence of such fellow draws his ire?
His exact words: “I will personally light a fierce fire in my hands. Whoever wants it we shall use it to burn them, whoever survives it will thank God. Whoever goes against us we will make him or her join my mother and lie with her (my mother) in the grave.”
Let us pause and examine this ear-deafening statement; Who is Yahaya Bello burning and who is he sending to lie with his late mother in the grave? The answer is simple;
Whoever dare to contest the forthcoming coming election with his anointed candidates would join his (Bello) mother in the grave. Just like Daniel Usman, whoever goes to the polling unit to vote out APC Kogi would join his mother in the grave. Whoever objects his non-payment of salaries to civil servants, segregated and bigotry rulership will join his mother in the grave. Whoever speaks against the prevailing corruption, mismanagement and looting in the white Lion’s government must join his mother in the grave.
Fellow Kogites, you do not need a soothsayer to understand Yahaya Bello’s body language. The recent happenings says it all. Already, PDP supporters in Dekina Local government had been subjected to needless mayhem by thugs. Homes and properties of opposition supporters are being vandalised. People are currently been displaced and lives Shattered. Election is not holding yet but all these are happening. It thus sends fears down the spine about the future of democracy in our dear state.
What exactly does Yahaya Bello want? Continued oppression? Does he want unpaid civil servants not to speak? What about the victims of insecurity such as banditry and kidnapping? Should those raped under his nose go mute? How long do we endure an economy plummeted in abyss of recklessness?
In an age when the cost of living is extremely high, a civil servant earns Five hundred Naira (N500) per month. Yet, emperor emperor GYB does not want opposition, excuse me! That is a crime against humanity. Besides, the negative trajectory of the people is better understood with a visit to the state. Our pensioners are dying in their numbers. The health system is unimaginably shattered. Social sector is next to nothing and life is generally worthless. Yet, in the face of such ugliness, one man wants the entire populace in quietness and solitary. Isn’t that optimally delusional? What an irrational ways to argue!
Democracy made provisions for opposition but a supposed democratic leader holds aloof. His scheme of unemployment has made youths so jobless that they helplessly considers carrying arms for him in order to survive. In the end, he uses and dump them, they resorted in the street and the law caught them in the act. Some are killed, others are jailed and generation of leaders are wasted. Alas! Our dictators are unrepentantly wicked. Once it is election, they remember those jailed and they immediately release them for another jobs.
May the earth open and swallow every politicians arming our youths for election violence and thuggery. And may our youths, our noble and industrious youths wise up to know that no society sustains with men of violence in its helm of leadership. If thuggery is a good venture, why not politician’s children? A word is enough.
By and large, the message is before us. We must at all times remember that those who force themselves on us don’t mean well for us. They are our greatest Albatross. Check the league of aspirants for whom Yahaya Bello threatened our existence, they’re those they previously perforated with words such as ritualist, thief etc. And it beckons in the mind to consider; what has changed? Have they returned the blood money or what they stole? Even those they which to return to office, what are their antecedents on the scale of sane appraisal? A swift peruse of this and more forestalls the sanctity of truth in all they present to us. At best, they are democratic pretenders sophisticated in violence but weakest in protecting common interests.
Our unity will end Yahaya Bello and his threats in the air. But they will surely flourish in our divisions. May his mother continue to rest in the Bosom of the Almighty Allah but no Kogite will join her in the grave courtesy of the fire in his (Bello) hands or the guns in the hands of thugs. The soil which nurtured his mother to that golden age will continue to nurture as many with or without threat or bloodshed. Ihima (Okehi Local government area of Kogi state) is a land with historic antecedents, people of noble and a city too sacred for such profane. As the ancient town which had the first western Education in Egbira-land, civilisation is undoubtedly too sophisticated for unguarded utterances. Akpanè, anè ki-kpa. Achèè!
– John Paul writes from Lagos.
Pauljohnk5@gmail.com
