On Saturday, Kogi State will go to the polls to elect their governor, and Kogi West, their senator. It is not entirely clear what the outcome would look like; but it is clear what it should look like.
The state was badly treated in the last four years and should sensibly denounce and repudiate candidate Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who is currently the governor, and also punish his senatorial candidate, Smart Adeyemi. But in matters such as elections, it is often hard to know when a people have suffered enough, or when they have been thoroughly betrayed, or when they have been cheapened and abused. Kogi voters should have no qualms in deciding how to vote at the weekend, for they will in fact be deciding how they should be treated in the next four years after a frenzied and horrendous past four years of mistreatment.
In some ways, Mr Bello has lent a hand to the electorate, admonishing them with all the force and bitterness at his command that faced with the dilemma of deciding whether to dump him or elect his favourite senatorial candidate, he would rather they elect Sen Adeyemi just to punish his worst enemy, Dino Melaye. It is unlikely Mr Bello meant voters to take this abominable choice to heart. Yes, he voiced this ludicrous option at an open forum with his campaign staff and government appointees and seemed serious about it; but in fact he was in his usual opaque and mystifying way trying to say that voters should elect both him and Sen Adeyemi. Should the voters indulge his fantasy, and were they capable of decoding his macabre sense of humour, he intends to have his cake and eat it, as gluttonously as is his custom.
The campaigns by the two leading political parties, the APC and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have been fierce but substantially devoid of issues and substance. But there is nothing in Kogi and the parties’ campaigns that suggests that the people are even interested in issues. Money, ethnic configuration, and to some extent the use, or threat, of force will determine who wins.
The PDP candidate, Musa Wada, an engineer, has campaigned dominantly on the governor’s ineptitude and lethargy. It makes sense. Why expend energy on newfangled developmental ideas that would be of doubtful utility or acceptability to the electorate? Mr Bello on the other hand has little to campaign on or to drive his candidacy. Having ruled the state for the last four years or so as if there would be no re-election, he has hinged his candidature on defeating Sen Melaye and posturing for another four years reward as governor for doing nothing.
Given the backing of Abuja and his sizeable war chest, not to say his readiness to use all means foul and fair, he could try to snatch a victory, especially if Kogi West and Kogi East succumb to his blandishments. But he should never win, for he would unleash the worst punishment any politician is capable of inflicting on a state. It is, therefore, up to Kogites to determine how their future would look like. If they have suffered enough, they should not find it difficult to return the governor’s compliment, determinedly resist him, punish his senatorial candidate, and get their sweet revenge. But if they are as masochistic as Mr Bello has privately sneered, who knows, they might defy pundits and pave his return to the Kogi Government House with precious metals.
But the most unbearable part of the campaign, the one factor that should determine how a sensible people should vote, is the governor’s obsession with Sen Melaye’s candidature. The theatrical Melaye is the governor’s bête noire, without whom Mr Bello would have no reason to live. Rather than focus on the issues of governance and the little he has left in his shallow basket of misbegotten ideas for the state should he be re-elected, the governor has taken an oath to have the senator crushed totally, even at the risk of losing his own governorship seat.
How on earth could someone harbour such appalling resentment, nurture it for years, and now obscenely hoist it before the electorate as a public totem worthy of veneration? How the governor is not disgusted with himself is hard to explain. Perhaps Kogites would have an explanation for the immeasurable contempt the governor has for them. That explanation will be translated to votes on Saturday, and the public will not be so dimwitted or too hard of hearing to misunderstand their message.
Not only does Mr Bello deserve to lose as a poor specimen of who a governor is– and will indeed lose given all feelers from the state at the moment — he really should be locked up and the key thrown away so as not to continue to undermine whatever civilisation is left in the state.
Credits: Idowu Akinlotan | The Nation
