It is lamentable that there is insanity, as the ALGON Chairman says as published by kogireports.com in Kogi State, and around or in Sen. Dino Melaye. But the Chairman failed to see that insanity comes in different forms and shapes, and that each man wears his in different form: dirt, dreadlocks, nakedness, torn clothes, thick hair, etc. If Sen. Dino Melaye is a mad man, as the ALGON Chairman told us, praising Bello and wishing Sen. Dino learned from Mr. Bello, then, it is clear the Chairman is himself mad to have thought Mr. Bello responsible enough to be emulated in the face of Mr. Bello’s irresponsible and criminal diversion of Kogi funds in the guise of (unending) screenings, creating poverty and causing death, with the latest of Governor Bello’s action being the invitation of insecurity on the people.
A man in his sane mind can detect very clearly that the ALGON Chairman and very many hungry men and women of his type are the primary problems we have in Kogi State. If people are dying of hunger because Bello created a fertile, albeit devilish ground for it, and then someone somewhere because of what he had eaten or hopes to eat will come out publicly to praise Mr. Bello, then that person as well as Governor Bello is an agent of death and destruction. Gov. Bello did not pay salaries for 13 months, students of Kogi State higher institutions are at home, there are no jobs, there is a serious case of people dying as a result of hunger, lose of jobs, etc. and the ALGON Chairman did not see Gov. Bello as mad. If Sen. Dino’s saying the truth and facing a tepid government to make it responsible is madness, then, the man who leaves people in hunger while he eats and smiles to the bank, is demented, far from being called just mere mad. It is the season of madness – from the man in power who does not see his action as deadly, the people he is leading who out of hunger have gone into begging, borrowing, prostitution, theft, prayers instead of confronting the useless and the drunken government up to the sycophants who praise the governor instead of bringing him out to the public and give him 12.
All that Senator Dino Melaye did as far as I am concerned was that he raised an alarm against the impending insecurity, death, hunger, starvation and dehumanization that the state and the people will suffer or are suffering, and the theft of public funds Mr. Bello and his retinue of aides are involved in. Senator Dino never complained about the local government chairmen or their head(s), and so does not deserve to be pilloried for injecting the public truth into the callow boy of a Governor by any of the hungry, favour-seeking local government workers or their representatives.
If the ALGON Chairman is responsible enough, why did he call on Senator Dino to copy Mr. Bello and not himself? Sen. Dino is rascal, and displays wealth and cars in the face of the poor masses that voted for him; Dino shouted at the people that went to him to beg for money, etc. etc. Is it not clear that the ALGON Chairman is displaying a crude sense of irresponsibility, having been to Dino lying and begging for money and did not succeed? Does he not feel the best way to vent his anger is to call Sen. Dino many unprintable names? I am not holding brief for Senator Dino, and least of all, not asking for his favour, but I am standing with Senator Dino, other well-meaning Kogites and at the door of truth to let the Chairman know that he falls short of pedestal status, having gone so low to praise Governor Bello, where Mr Bello does not deserve even a “Good morning, and to insult a highly placed citizen, Sen. Dino Melaye, who has the power to drive loud sense into a boy you called the Governor.
The jinx on Kogi State, which led to many years of political tussle and instability, and which finally led to the untimely exit of an icon (Alhaji Prince Abubakar Audu) from the political scene and the living world, brought with it a hurricane hex called Yahaya Bello. For the very first time in the history of Nigerian civil service, no democratic, not even military government had ever subjected the citizens of a state to a one and a half years of insensate, unending screening without pay. It is now very clear, from the ALGON Chairman’s stance why the Kogi State civil servants have been living pathetic lives, from the city to the villages. The ALGON Chairman who is supposed to be the voice and the representative of the civil servants at the local government level in Kogi State is living in sycophancy and in bootlicking, having got his blood-tainted money from the governor. He rejoices at the sufferings, sweats and tombs of the Kogi State civil servants, and turned himself to a spokesman of the Kogi State Government House, Lokoja.
Many households now live pathetic and pitiable lives. Some have resorted to intelligent, yet humiliating, mature begging from the known to the unknown just to feed their families. Many children have dropped out of schools for their parents’ inability to pay their school fees. Many young children of tender ages, mostly girls have gone into prostitution and boys, into petty thieves and pilfering just to feed themselves and their parents – all thanks to Governor Yahaya Bello’s invitation of doom on the people of Kogi State. The bastardization of a noble act of governance by Yahaya Bello makes it repulsive to consider bringing in any callow youth as a leader in the future, especially in Kogi State. Mr Bello thinks the Kogi State civil servants are part of his many workers of his FairPlus Transport Business, and so, he subjects them to a treatment akin to dog’s food.
We have been calling on the youth to take up the responsibility of governance and allow the aged and the infirm to rest their old bones from the haggle of politics and social businesses. But if what Mr Bello represents in government were what to go by, then, the old and the aged should rule and without end, I suppose.
Going back the memory lane, Prince Abubakar Audu, Ibrahim Idris and Idris Wada were at one time or the other the governors of the state. They never subjected workers to a one-year punishment of hunger and dehumanisation. Remember, the issue of civil servants’ screenings is not novel in Kogi State. Ex-Governor Ibrahim Idris subjected all the civil servants in the state to months of intensive screening, yet no worker was left unpaid. In the screening by Ibrahim Idris’ (Ibro’s) government, top officials and political office holders who engaged in shady deals and were involved in the looting of the government treasury were hard hit by the effects of the screening. One of the political figures in the state who was said to have several imaginary hospitals, schools and health centres with full staff lists and were paid from the government purse was removed in the process. That was justifiable.
The Governor Yahaya Bello’s jejune, hungry, sycophant and tyro screening team is bent on pleasing its principal by removing every helpless civil servant using every fiendish opportunity to dub them ghost. What on earth the word “ghost worker” means on a pensioner or a worker who has been in service for years is mysterious to me. A ghost worker to me is a worker who does not have an established office and does not work for an establishment, but yet gets paid from the employer. A worker who has been in the service of government for years in Kogi State, and who has been getting paid for active service is to Yahaya Bello today, a ghost. In some cases, the screening team said wryly that the people were dubbed ‘ghost’ because they had not been promoted for years. From the Kogi State University, Anyigba, some professors were asked to voluntarily resign including the VC even though the Federal Government of Nigeria set the retirement age of a professor at 70. Asked why they had to resign, the screening team blamed it on the professors’ lack of promotion. Are the professors supposed to be called directors in the university before they are termed promoted? The same fate hit the Kogi State Polytechnic’s Rector. He was asked to resign; his offence being that he is a Rector and was supposed to have been promoted. To what? VC? Many workers of the Kogi State University, Anyigba who were employed in 2015 were not paid for months. Not only were they not paid, they were also dubbed ‘political appointees’ by Mr Bello, yet Mr Bello employs on a daily basis, replacing those he removed. Mr Bello did not advertise the vacancies he filled, and he did not call those he employed newly into the Kogi State University, Anyigba “political appointees”.
All these happenings are the outcome of a government of a boy: jejune, green and tyro, which Senator Dino Melaye and other well-meaning Kogites have been condemning. Whoever rises up against the public voices of these good Kogites who fight for the masses is an enemy of the state. The ALGON Chairman as well as his Governor Bello and his aides is an enemy of Kogi State.
– Odih Daniel N.,
Lord Lugard Road, Lokoja, Kogi State,
Nigeria.
@odih4sure
