By Ayo Akinuli Kofar
As a bona-fide citizen of Kogi State, who, though based abroad, regularly visits home and always in touch with my people of Ogori-Magogo in Kogi East senatorial district, I have first-hand information about the development and challenges of my state. I do not need anyone to put words in my mouth. I have the facts. This piece is my way of responding to a mischievous article by a befuddled political jobber with questionable intent and bilious vituperations of a compound ignoramus.
His ill-fated article titled: ‘The Tragic End of a Tyrant: How Governor Bello Squandered Public Goodwill to Become the Most Loathed Governor in Kogi’s History,’ is a fallacious compendium of gibberish, engineered by failed and failing politicians of featherweight status in Kogi State’s sophisticated politics.
The author, who calls himself Okpanachi Offor, is definitely a victim of his own gluttonous fixation on perilous stomach infrastructure. We know one another very well here in the Diaspora, especially this United Kingdom, where I’m also resident as the glaikit author of that fatuous junk. His claims in that junk are not only ludicrous, but can only be spewed by a chowderhead. It is the product of a frustrated Diasporan, who desperately jumped at crumbs thrown at him like a hungry dog by political renegades back home. I’ll make an attempt in this short piece to address his failed attempt at cheap blackmail against Governor Yahaya Bello.
Let me state unequivocally that I am neither a member nor aficionado of the All Progressives Congress, APC, or any of its politicians, including Governor Bello. He doesn’t know me and I only know him as the governor of my state of origin and someone whose story and records in office have inspired me and uncountable young Nigerians far beyond Kogi State. Therefore, I have the natural instinct to respond to any sort of fallacy of impudent generalization against him. I’m a highly successful Diasporan, unlike the author, who we know has been struggling over here in the UK and wouldn’t take the risk of visiting home due to inadequate documentation and sundry issues.
First, the hireling described Yahaya Bello as “a despised tyrant.” The first counter-indicator to this ludicrous position is that if Yahaya Bello was a tyrant, many troublers of Kogi State, including the writer’s paymasters for his shoddy blackmail job, would have been run out of town. These are folks who never meant well for our dear state, but would rather be hand-in-glove with criminal elements causing chaos all over the state.
Of course, their reign of terror has been decimated significantly in the state and we can’t expect their backers to be amused. They will fight back and part of their fighting back is to shop for a Diasporan with an essentially refugee status abroad to do their dirty campaign of calumny against the state governor.
I can confidently say that there has been no governor since the creation of Kogi State, 32 years ago, who has successfully maintained prime security in that state like Yahaya Bello.
The state was effectively in the firm grips of ferocious criminals and terrorist cells before the coming of Yahaya Bello in 2016. Previous governors, rather than fight the crime lords, were “settling” them with hefty amounts of state resources meant to fight them. Immediately Yahaya Bello took over as governor, he destroyed their criminal empire and uprooted the problem of insecurity from source. Their sponsors were fatally injured, while the survivors have been engaging in anti-democratic shenanigans and character assassination ever since.
For anyone to accuse Yahaya Bello of “cluelessness” means that such a simpleton is either suffering from complicated schizophrenia, or is shamelessly nescient.
I have never known a more deliberate governor in Kogi State’s history.
This stands for Yahaya Bello, perhaps more than any other. He does what he says! He is a courageous young man, who has no reason to renege on promises made. This leads me to the laughable allegation of “ethnic polarization” against the same governor. For sure, we have to investigate the state of the mental health of the author of that inutile defamation. This is a governor who has picked talents from across the state and even beyond to work in his government. He broke the jinx of governors working only with people from their ethnic stock in strategic positions. Under him, the Igala, Okun, Ebira became one, a scenario that had never been seen in the history of the state. Projects have been evenly distributed too.
Nigerians are not lazy. They can investigate and verify. A governor who can comfortably work with people from states other than his, from ethnic and religious backgrounds other than his, cannot, in all sincerity, be accused of ethnic bigotry. His administration and capital projects siting are fully reflective of the overall ethnic configurations of Kogi State. He is not so petty as the ill-informed writer tried to portray him.
Yahaya Bello has been the one promoting and maintaining ethnic harmony in Kogi State, despite the extremely challenging ethnic relations in our state prior to his emergence as governor of the state. The Prince Abubakar Audu University that the detractor laboured so unsuccessfully to trivialise has witnessed unprecedented capital project developments under Governor Bello in the last seven years, and wearing incredible aesthetic looks, that I, as a Kogi State indigene, am so proud of. Under this administration, that same university has recorded accreditation of several professional courses and is among the best rated universities in the country today. The job of a blackmailer must be so tiring when searching for a needle in the ocean of blackmail to rubbish your target. I pity the guy for allowing himself to be used as toilet paper in the service of political desperation.
The enviable administrative and political sagacity of Yahaya Bello is even recognized by the Federal Government of Nigeria. That came into play when he was charged with the responsibility of resolving a huge challenge that threatened to throw Nigeria into unmitigated chaos and instability. It was the Federal Government’s call, but it was Yahaya Bello, who was summoned to the rescue by former President Muhammadu Buhari. In April 2021, Northern traders while protesting how they were allegedly being mistreated in the Southern part of Nigeria, particularly in the aftermath of a bloody clash in Ibadan, decided to place an embargo on the transportation of foodstuffs to Southern Nigeria as a whole. It was a crisis that had the potential to lead Nigeria to a second civil war if not the way it was masterfully managed by Governor Bello at that time for which not only former President Buhari, but Nigerians as a whole were/are grateful to him. Before you can accuse anyone of corruption, you must not only have your facts, but also present them. You can’t just raise phantom allegations without unveiling the facts therein. This, the blackmailer failed woefully to do. In July of 2021, the World Bank wrote a letter of commendation to Governor Bello, acknowledging his excellent leadership qualities. It happened then that there was a surplus of over N4.1 billion that Governor Bello returned to the World Bank from the funds meant for the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project, NEWMAP. The letter of commendation was duly signed by World Bank’s Regional Director, Shubham Chaudhuri, who described the action as a sign of good leadership. It’s difficult to find a public office holder at that level who can display such uncommon transparency and integrity. The World Bank is a global institution not answerable to anybody in Nigeria. But that’s their verdict on Governor Bello, who a thicket of gormless dunces are trying to pin corruption on. It is all a mere farcical conjecture by irredeemable species trading in calumny.
The state, under Governor Bello, has also won transparency and accountability awards from the same World Bank and other reputable organisations, both in Nigeria and abroad. Naysayers would never see these. They would rather stick shamefully to their evil lies. To accuse Yahaya Bello of lack of empathy is to take fiction to ridiculous heights. Just last month, August 2023, it was all over the news how Yahaya Bello recognized a former secondary school mate along Lokoja-Abuja Expressway among crowds of people. That former school mate of his, one Babawako Adamu, is a peasant farmer in that community, who Yahaya Bello has not seen in more than two decades. Yet, as the executive governor of a state, he recognized him in a traffic logjam, alighted from his car in the well-protected convoy, called the man, shook hands with him and there and then blessed his life with unexpected charity. What is empathy beyond this? But a blackmailer is always bereft of reason.
The mention of a seeming political contest of relevance between Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and Yahaya Bello is the most laughable claim by the writer. When it comes to reputational integrity and political stature, the latter is an infinitesimal dwarf compared to Yahaya Bello. I think Yahaya Bello treats Natasha like a negligible political dwarf that is not worth a red cent of his time in my opinion. So, how would a whole state governor descend so low as to cut off a whole community, because of a woman who is enmeshed in allegations of unconscionable series of scandal as a serial blackmailer. Is that who a state governor would waste his time pursuing about? Beyond the blackmail industry churning out repetitive falsehoods, the enviable leadership qualities of Yahaya Bello speak louder than imagined. His commendable legacy projects speak for themselves. His open-door policy and closeness to his people, irrespective of social status, speak for themselves. His genuine love for Kogi State and his tireless hardwork in developing and securing the state are also highly commendable. His humanization of governance speaks for itself. His dissemination of hope to his generation that no height is insurmountable speaks for itself. His high level of accountability speaks for itself. Yahaya Bello will go down in the annals of Kogi State as the man who resuscitated a fainted state and returned it to the path of sustainable development. That blackmailer’s article is a potpourri of misrepresentations, replete with a claptrap of malarkeys and malicious gossip. I so submit.
•Kofar is the Secretary-General, Diaspora Youth Assembly, London, United Kingdom.
