It is longer news that Governor Yahaya Bello has recently abandoned his duties as governor of kogi state to assume the new role of an unofficial spokesperson to President Muhammadu Buhari. His recent outburst in a reaction to the message of the Nigerian Bishops on their visit to Mr President even before the reaction of the real media aides to the president left no one in doubt that the governor ridiculously takes his new role very seriously.
What has been on the lips of many kogites is; whether their unelected governor will ever stop embarrassing them and openly displaying his intellectual deficiencies, lack of decorum, executive rascality, pettiness and lack of comportment. Aside the fact that many of the Governor’s policies and programmes do need have meaning impact on the lives of the people of the state, his retinue of appointees makes a mockery of their boss who have had no single completed project since the inception of his administration, by sponsoring meaningless projects like building mosques and churches just to enhance their individual future political chances.
The quality and manner of press releases that were being churned out on behalf by the governor by his media aides does not only portray the government as a failure, grossly incompetent and one lacking a direction but also makes people wonder whether the governor appointed semi-literate artisans as media aides. The hasty demolition of the major round-abouts within the Lokoja metropolis even when the state government had no plans to replace or reconstruct them sooner than after almost two years after they were brought down shows that it’s either the governor have no advisers or the ones he has do not care about his public image and the perception of the people.
Despite virtually turning himself into a ‘house boy’ to the president’s household, Gov Bello have not been able to use his acclaimed father-son relationship between himself and Mr president to facilitate the resuscitation and completion of the abandoned and near moribund Ajaokuta Steel Company which experts said has the capacity to create more than two hundred thousand direct jobs. One would have expected that the governors frequent ‘romance’ with the nation’s number one citizen would translate into a huge federal government presence in terms of citing of developmental projects that would benefit the people of the state, but the Governor hasn’t even been able to summon ample courage to invite Mr president to kogi state because there are no projects completed yet by the state government to be commissioned, since inception of the present government.
The people of Kogi state weren’t too shocked when their governor once again abandoned his executive seat and office in Lokoja despite the myriad of problems and challenges confronting the state which needs urgent attention, only to go and keep a vigil in Abuja, waiting for the arrival of the son of the president, Yusuf Buhari. Maybe the reason why a state like Lagos is progressively moving forward and making giant strides in all sectors is because Governor Akinwumi Ambode does not spend more time in Abuja fraternizing with the president than in his office in Lagos brainstorming on how best to deliver good governance to Lagosians. What governor Bello’s advisers should be telling him if he really has one is for him to quit being the president’s ‘boy’ and relocate back Lokoja to brainstorm with his appointees and elder statesmen on how best to govern the state, provide leadership and deliver dividends of democracy to Kogites.
– Hussain Obaro writes from Lokoja.
oseniobaro@yahoo.com
