If the state governors due to vacate power and office next year, Yahaya Bello of Kogi is sure to claim to be the most accomplished.
The record is clear.
He made the environment so forbidding to the coronavirus Covid-19 that the infernal pathogen was reduced to circulating over, above, under, and around Kogi as if kept in orbit by some geomagnetic force but could never come close even tangentially.
The marauders whose cattle devastated farmlands while they laid entire villages to do waste, killing and maiming and kidnapping the residents, are nothing if not discerning. Yahaya Bello’s Kogi was off-limits. They knew, even without being told, that to cross the line he had drawn around the territory. was to court annihilation.
He had intimidated public servants into accepting, with gratitude, that payment of one-third of a smaller fraction of their salaries into the bank accounts every month or whenever the spirit moved him amounted to full discharge of the state’s obligations.
He had conquered teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, trade unionists, political opponents, and all such types, reducing them to self-pitying onlookers, fawning proxies, and groveling accomplices.
Under him, the state legislature became a reptile assembly and a rubber stamp.
The tat-tat-tat rhythm of gunfire that perfused his pronouncements large and small left little room for doubt about the fate that awaited anyone who would dare to question or countermand his authority.
But the time to vacate his all-conquering perch was fast approaching. Time to render an account of his stewardship. Sooner rather than later, all the jiggery-pokery would be exposed. What everyone had long suspected would come to light: The treasury was empty.
And there was pretty little to show for all the reports about foreign investors and industrialists whose technological and entrepreneurial wizardry had transformed Kogi’s land mass into the richest and most productive terrain in the world, square kilometre for square kilometre.
All adversaries had been vanquished, and all opposition crushed. But it must never be said that Yahaya Bello bequeathed an empty treasury to his successor and his people. So, even as the River Niger swelled and raged and threatened to overwhelm, action was indicated elsewhere, urgently.
Hadn’t the flooding Niger wrought greater havoc last year and the year before? And hadn’t everyone adjusted and moved on? They would do so again. The floods will always be with us anyway; far better to face a greater menace.
To be sure, the treasury was never full. At its least flaccid, it held just about enough juice to sustain the appearance of liquidity. Bello had frittered away its anaemic contents in a campaign to actualize a hare-brained Presidential ambition, which he promoted as “God’s plan for Nigeria.”
As the evangelicals would say, God was not mocked. The campaign never got off the ground. But reflating the treasury could no longer be delayed.
Kogi’s authorities had jousted with Africa’s wealthiest businessman, Aliko Dangote, over sundry matters relating to the cement industry, the crown jewel of the mogul’s far-flung business empire located in Obajana, near Lokoja, the state capital.
Now it was time to bring Dangote to heel and the mogul and his business interests to the casualty list of the little napoleon who, it would appear, lives each day haunted and taunted and perhaps even inspired by the ghost of Frederick Lugard, the former imperial resident of those precincts. Time, also, to reflate the treasury.
An extortion scheme, of which our syndicated kidnappers are sure to take note, was underway.
Dispatch a batallion of thugs to shut down and seize the plant, under a dubious claim of ownership, injuring workers and damaging equipment and machinery in the process – thugs from perhaps the same outfit that had vandalized the Federal Medical Centre, Lokoja, and destroyed medical records of Covid patients whose existence Yahaya Bello had vigorously disputed.
That incident was never investigated. No arrests were ever made, and no persons were ever charged. So, who is going to work up a fuss over the storming, by Kogi stalwarts, of a plant “owned’ by Kogi State?
Get the state legislature – the reptile assembly aforementioned — to issue a proclamation divesting Dangote of any claim to the plant and ancillary assets and vesting same in the Kogi State Government.
Just like that. Without fear and without research. They had received their orders from Himself the Executive Governor Yahaya Bello. What authority could be greater or more reassuring?
Bello’s Man Friday, Kingsley Fanwo, who doubles as Kogi’s commissioner for information, has framed the issue as a struggle by the people of Kogi to recover their stolen endowment, to deploy it for the benefit of the people.
Hear him:
“This struggle is not about governor Yahaya Bello or his administration. It is about the people of Kogi State. In the last 72 hours, well-meaning Nigerians, leaders and government officials have waded in and have pleaded with the governor to consider reopening the plant while discussions are ongoing.
“The expectations of the over 4 million Kogites are clear and high and we want to assure them that the governor and the government of Kogi State will not compromise the interest of the people of the state to reclaim their rights in the cement company.
“We shall be non-violent in our approach as we are sure of green pathways to success for the people in this battle for the economic future of our dear state.
“However, we maintain that the collective assets of the people of Kogi state must be protected and reclaimed in this instance. And that is the process the government has started. We will fight this battle to the end until we get justice from the courts. No committee can resolve this dispute.”
If Fanwo and his principal believed in the rule of law and had any faith in the competence of the courts to resolve the dispute, why the violent rush to self-help? Why the brigandage? Why proceed, based on the report of a commission of inquiry empanelled by one of the parties to the dispute, without the benefit of a dispassionate review by a third party?
As it is, the state government made the charges, investigated them, pronounced judgment, and rushed to enforcement, without the benefit of judicial review. The whole thing was incestuous through and through. What would they have lost by following due process?
I gather Kogi State has an attorney-general, who is listed as a member of its Executive Council. What part did he play in this dispute? Why is it that it is the commissioner for information, not the attorney-general, that is speaking on behalf of the government on a dispute that has arcane matters of law at its core?
It was like that during Covid, when official pronouncements on the plague came from the information commissioner or the secretary to the state government, never from the health commissioner or the director of medical services. It was as if the state had no medical professionals qualified to help steer the state through the pandemic.
The State Assembly is a house of law. What law empowers it to shut even a roadside kiosk without due process, let alone a business that is the largest employer in the state and one of the biggest sources of its internally-generated revenue?
If Kogi has been swindled by Dangote Cement as it claims, the forum for adjudication is the court of law. Kogi has not demonstrated respect for, and faith in, the due process of law enjoined by our avowed commitment to democracy.
As for Yahaya Bello, it is probably too late for him to learn to conduct himself with civility and decorum. But he should spare the public his infantile tantrums during what remains of the accidental governorship he owes to the naiveté of the former leadership of the APC National Executive, the scheming of a Federal Attorney-General beholden hegemonic calculations of those who claim to be custodians of the North’s interests, and the cold complicity of the courts.
•Written By Olatunji Dare
