Should Kogi workers heave a sigh of relief now that their governor, Yahaya Bello has agreed that he indeed owes workers between six and 38 months salaries and that he would offset that debt before December? The answer should be simple. When your governor makes a promise, his word should be his bond. But if you take Bello’s words to any bank or any of the three markets in Lokoja or anywhere else in the state, you are bound to return with an empty basket of disappointment.
Bello is a failed governor and it sucks because he is the youngest governor ever in both Kogi and perhaps Naija’s history. Those who dis the geriatrics recycling themselves in government for Naija’s underdevelopment have a sad example why the ‘youths’ are no better.
In four years in office, Bello has nothing positive to point to except perennial staff audits. This was the first excuse he gave for not paying workers. In the years since he sustained this scam, his government is yet to come up with a single prosecution. As anyone conversant with the ekuechi festival knows, where there are ghosts there are puppeteers directing the ghosts. If Bello’s audit has saved Kogi taxpayers money, it should be used to pay pensioners or for tangible development. Even after federal bailout, Kogi remains indebted to its workers while the governor bloats. Executed projects are so shoddy they barely survive commissioning.
After serial cover-ups and denials, Bello’s admittance of debts owed is perhaps the only truth that has come out of late. This confession is because Bello is facing the electorate for the rubberstamp votes needed to sustain a notion of democracy in Kogi. Elections are to politicians what examinations are to students; they force them to become accountable.
Those who describe Kogi as a civil service state are wrongly right. Yes, education is the major industry of Kogi people, but the ground under their feet is as rich as their grey matter. Kogi has been unlucky with leadership. Plagued since creation by people who love the perks of office but deny the responsibility thereof. Bello is the epitome of the kind of leadership crisis that has plagued the state. Although he printed posters, he was absolutely unprepared to govern a state like Kogi. He got a court-induced mandate but rather than invest in ideas, he hired a host of advisers most of who are in need of advice. The result is a top-heavy administration with little or nothing left for governance.
Bello fell in love with Abuja and the occupant of the highest office in the land. He would fuel up a horde of vehicles and whimsically take off to Abuja, to prove loyalty to Muhammadu Buhari leaving his citizens high and dry. If it were possible, Bello would have taken over the sitting room, the kitchen and the other room. He has sustained the propaganda of loyalty until the APC machinery, came to the realization that he is a liability and not an asset worth open re-endorsement. That was when it dawned on Bello that he would need to stand on his own two feet, except that he has dug himself in a bog.
As a state, Kogi’s potentials are obvious. It is not a poor state. Its natural hosting of the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers were tapped even by colonialists. That made Lokoja the capital of Nigeria, the headquarters of the Royal Niger Company and Frederick Lugard’s home base.
Kogi’s fertile land is most suitable for food and cash crops. The people are industrious enough to feed themselves and grow for export. Properly harnessed, Kogi is a gateway state with enough tourism potentials for carnivals, regatta and other cultural fiesta. Its acquatic potentials could be tapped into by a prepared governor.
Bello has been clowning around Aso Rock instead of harnessing resources. Investment in the educational potentials of the state could help the state run first-class institutions to attract students from all over the world, making it a centre of learning, tourism and commerce.
But Bello has no desire for development; instead, he has turned the state over to the dogs. While he has failed to pay salary and emoluments, he has never gone to Abuja without taking his own allowances. With unpaid wages, Bello runs the most overtaxed state in the country.
He has a culture of entrenched political primitivity leading the state into a state of anarchy. Kidnappers and armed robbers have used the few trees left in the forests as cover for their nefarious activities.
In politics, anyone who is even perceived to be a potential threat is hunted, hounded and often murdered in cold blood. Young Natasha Akpoti’s life was threatened so many times and her father’s house torched in unprecedented level of political intolerance for daring to run for senatorial office.
This writer, with no political affiliation had his father’s cottage and several others in a remote village of Okeagi vandalized on the eve of the last elections in which Bello was not even a candidate. Family members constantly caution against writing this article for fear of reprisal of the Kabawa boys, an army of thugs in hitherto peaceful Okun land.
In the eastern part of the state, thugs shot and killed several people during the same election. In Kogi, people live in eternal fear. Only those who have raised higher thugs to meet Bello’s hoodlums fire for fire are free to roam our free land. Casualties are left at God’s mercy. People have died on fake payment queues and slumped over false payment alerts.
Bello’s vuvuzelas have attributed the high level of criminality in the state to the divestment of armed thugs from government largesse except they are yet to prosecute one political crime baron in the state in four years.
With elections coming Bello and his friends want to hoodwink voters to sign in to four more years of irreversible servitude. He seeks to entice people with their hard-earned entitlements. We’ll all be doomed if we let him because Kogi deserves better.
– Tunde Asaju
