The gubernatorial elections has come and gone together with the litigation that followed, with all the anxiety, stress and financial implications. A section of the political class has been jubilating while a section has been counting their losses.
Is it really worth it to have spent so much money on the elections and the court cases that followed? Who pays the legal fees? Certainly, the people. Can’t we conduct free, fair and credible elections that will meet international best practices that will not involve going to court?
Now that the cases have been fought to the supreme court and has been won and lost, what is the way forward?
Governor Yahaya Bello should as a matter of urgency embark on genuine and credible reconciliation within his patty and across board
The governor must see himself as belonging to all and not to be warehoused by any group claiming to love him more than others or claiming to have more legitimacy than others.He must shun ethnicity.
There is a need to constitute a committee on need assessment of each section of the state that will adress the problems of infrastructure decay winner takes all and other crucial issues.
First, the issue of salaries for workers, pensioners and ex-political office holders as well as all errors and lopsidedness associated with these must be resolved. Many are facing untold hardship including hunger, sickness, debts etc
Secondly, there should be a deliberate search for people of track records that can bail out the state from the present economic and financial doldrums. The search should be extended to the private sector.
Thirdly, His Excellency must shun praise singing, mediocrity and bitterness. He must be father to all.
He must develop a thick skin that can absorb criticisms and insults as it is part of the game.
Regular town hall meetings and feed back mechanism must be improved upon.
Finally, His Excellency, after winning the court cases, must see the whole of the state as his constituency. He must behave like rain that has no enemy. Governance is a social contract that must be respected.
When all these are done, I believe governance would have been reenacted. An old man once said; “No one can call himself lucky until the end.” There is an opportunity to correct all errors.
May God help us.
– Pastor Dayo Akanmode, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, writes from Lokoja, Kogi State.
