It could be best described as a rude shock coming at a wrong time, conferment of an award on the Executive governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello as the most security conscious governor in Nigeria on 9th February, 2017 by the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris which is highly baffling in the face of incontestable fact that crimes and criminality in the state now leaves all in a nightmare. In Kogi State, all forms of crimes rising from kidnappings, armed robberies, killings,vandalisation of government and private infrastructure have been the order of the day.
Without being immodest, kidnappings for ransom which was used to be the business of ramshackle gangs in the South-east of the country few years ago has become a phenomenon in Kogi State now. Statistics showed that kidnappings and armed robberies in the last one year of Bello’s administration surpassed 16 years record of similar crimes in preceding administrations.
The Cosmo genesis of a heightened crime in Kogi State at this time of the day could be attributed to several variables. One of which is that the state is purely a civil service state. There is no single functional private or public factory; hence, in the last 25 years creation of the state, Kogites have willy-nilly entered into the state’s civil service, a situation that occasioned ding-dong affairs about who is genuine and those that are ghost workers in the state civil service. Thus, those not captured in the system connives with outsider criminals for all sorts of crimes for survival using a complicated topographical terrain of the state for a cover.
The tragedy is coupled with endless staff verification; an exercise that has subjected civil servants to untold hardship, hence, this administration cannot be isolated as causative of crimes in the state now.
Staff verification which witnessed five different panels in the last one year without credible results has left the state in distraught and it is suggestive that the governor lacks administrative acumen to galvanise the state into a functional system.
Deaths, anger, cries and trauma which the workers in the state were subjected to, hitherto, manifest a puerile and weak system, a situation where elders in the state and wise men tried to intervene, but alas, they were seen as interlopers.
Much as governor Bello procured over 200 utility vehicles for security agencies does not automatically translated into security and that cannot be singularly translated into merit for an award?
As a governor, he is the chief security officer of the state by statutory provisions. So it is not enough that vehicles were purchased as ‘security or insecurity’ does not solely depend on such, but actions and inactions of the chief executive could.
With governor Bello’s commitment as the Inspector General of Police would want us to believe and yet there have been audacious crime and criminality, it shows then that security architecture of the state has completely failed and that should give the IG concern rather than dishing an award. It also calls for IG’s audit of his men underKogi State command to know if there were compromises. Insecurity in the state has reached a very dangerous dimension such that it was not only kidnapping that was rampant, but no day passed without herdsmen and farmers clashes across the state.
Today in Kogi state, over 30,000 workers have reflected on the ‘uncleared list’. Their salaries have been stopped in the last one year despite government propaganda that salaries have been cleared and windy missives by those defending government actions against their perceived traducers. None of them could dare go to farm for fear of herdsmen attack as there is obvious death in the farm. The fear of death in the farm will not allow farming anymore and to a large extent it will lead to food shortages.
Therefore, it puzzles any right thinking person if the award on the 9th of February, 2017 as the most security conscious governor in Nigeria was worth it.
Moreso, the state has historical antecedents of political thugery across the three senatorial districts in a manner that thugs were armed with weapons by politicians to rig elections and force their way into office. Dangerous weapons are rampant like walking sticks, but the last administration in all fairness tried to stop patronage ofthugery and it metamorphosed into high profile crimes.
Carrot and stick approach would have been ideal where amnesty is suggested if they will come out of caves to surrender their weapons and integrate them into government initiatives.
Security is a shared responsibility which is not absolutely dependent on carrying guns or manning a bit, but cooperation among the people. But people must be happy with government for them to cooperate, in that way, they could share information and in the absence of people’s participation in their own security prognoses that the end to crime and criminality in the state is still far-flung.
What is much desired too is political maturity. One year into this administration is enough of a time to separate politics from governance. The entire organs of the state have been locked down due to conflicts of interest among political echelons in the state which is taking a toll on the educational system.
Closure of all tertiary institutions as a result of strikes is not healthy for a state likeKogi that is largely peopled with illiteracy compared with other contemporary ones in the North. Educational sector has its unique operations that must be isolated from politicking andethno-centrism, believing that beliefs of government of the day if not in tandem can be remedied without causing irredeemable damages as is being the case now.
In Kogi State University for instance, state Polytechnic and other higher institutions in the state, it is one thing that a section of the state has domineering effect, and it is another thing that those institutions are infested with ghost workers. Thus, it is manifest absurdity to stop salaries and entitlements of those legally employed in the state tertiary institutions because government is determined to weed out those perceived to have dominated the institutions without taking into consideration salient factors that grows those institutions to where you met it. A stitch in time saves nine.
– Samson Atek’ojo Usman
