Despite his pretensions at cleaner civility, Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello and Senator Dino Melaye, representing Kogi West senatorial district are dual kind of same. More like non-identical twins of the malady afflicting the state. Interestingly, they share a name rhyme; Bello/Dino.
Both are undeserving of the political spaces they currently desecrate. But Kogi, with its pure mercantile politics, deserves them. The tragedy both represent in this republic is the suffocating stuff in many states across the land. Is it not funny Bello is the one championing Dino’s recall? The only difference before now was Bello desecrating Lokoja and Dino fouling Abuja. Now, the stench is centralised in the state and the worst can only be expected. I assume the governor’s camp will have better sense than expecting Dino’s recall to be an end to its nightmare or a freer space to continue with its impolitic. True, the baritone voice of the lawmaker should be ringing from elsewhere, desirably, a wilderness.
But the move by Bello and his men should not and won’t achieve this. It is likely that their Abuja APC and its men of wool-weight, now obviously on the governor’s side, would step in when both are covered with more mud, to declare a no-victor, no-vanquished ceasefire. But no resolution, whether judicial or political, will make either of them desirable with their current mindsets, public utterances, conducts and politics. Both men need a change and it is not the kind their party offers, which brought their kind into public space in the first place. The concept of public service should be taught the duo, with full tutorials on civility and comportment. This will surely take some time.
The state, without doubt, has kept throwing up inadequate public office leaders, making it one of the most backward among its peers. Those who should really take the sticks are the opinion leaders, elders and electorate who at every election, focus on the dough, and dump men of vision for questionable wealth and spending. How on their lives do they think a Dino who knows their mentality inside out, would fall for their recall package? Were they in Siberia when the ABU-man got involved like a street fighter as a Rep. member? Did he steal all the votes that promoted him to the Senate? Kogi West and the rest should spare us the insincere tears. Dino has always been a “fighter” in whatever term. He won’t stop “fighting”. It will be for Kogi to place him in a deserving political and posterity corner. Bello isn’t a shade better, if not worse. Maybe Kogi didn’t really bring him on, but he can be taken out, for a mature, focussed and inspiring governor the next time, if his impudent style persists.
None of the two fellows here is a demulcent story. If one must go, then the other must not stay. None is also qualified to sit in judgment over the other. While the recall drama continues to play out, the real task at hand, is for those who selflessly mean well for the state, to begin a rescue mission, independent of those currently involved in the on-going head-butting in the pigsty. When a clear future is worked out for the state, a reformed Bello or Dino could now be factored. The ways of both men right now are like the biblical highway to perdition. But in all honesty, if I had a pick, Dino would be a better wild-card.
Credit: Tribune
