• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Kogi: Odds against APC’s Bello as PDP chances brighten

Musa Wada

Despite winning his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s second term ticket, many odds still stand against incumbent Governor Yahaya Bello ahead of the November 16 governorship election in Kogi State.

Already, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is heaving a sigh of relief as Musa Wada has won the ticket of the party. While Bello is from the minority Ibira and Wada from the majority Igala ethnicity, the Kogi politics holds that the Igala has the majority and can always spring a surprise by turning out the majority votes.

Bello became governor in 2015 by divine providence, following the death of Abubakar Audu, the then APC guber candidate and the declaration of the election inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Unfortunately, Audu died shortly after the election was declared inconclusive and after a lot of rigmarole, APC brought in Bello who came second in the primary election conducted ahead of the governorship polls as James Faleke, late Audu’s running mate was pushed out.

For the 2019 Kogi guber poll, Bello may not be as lucky as in 2019 as he had faced stiff opposition right in his party before getting the return ticket he contested with nine aspirants cleared by APC.

In the build up to the primaries, about 50 aspirants indicated interest in the APC ticket and have through different groups asked the APC leadership not to allow him become governorship candidate for a second term as this would lead to the defeat of the party at the polls, and it is not clear whether these aspirants will team up with Bello to avoid the defeat they predicted.

Bello’s ‘enemies at home’, had in one of their protest letters to the national leadership of APC accused him of various anti-people activities, ranging from suicidal deaths amongst the state civil servants whose salaries have not been paid for many months, institutional dearth in the land, misuse of state resources, hunger and perceived molestation of people who believed not to be supporters of the present administration in the state.

“Salaries of civil servants for November and 60percent of December, 2017 are yet to be paid, this is despite receiving N20 billion as bailout funds, over N21billion from the Paris Club refund and money from the monthly federal allocations as well as the internally generated revenue.

“As a result of nonpayment of salaries, about three civil servants took their own lives because of their inability to meet up with their family needs, while over a hundred have died due to lack of funds to continue treatment,” the protest letter read.

Dan Ali, spokesperson of the protesters had also said: “Businesses have folded up, people are leaving for other states to seek refuge and workers have become paupers, feeding from hand to mouth. You will believe me that on no account will the people support and vote for a governor that operates draconian policy of this nature”.

“Workers in Kogi State are now living like IDPs; Kogi State has become hunger/poverty capital of the country as nothing seems to be working due to the sorry state of salaries.

“In Kogi State today, there are no public primary schools for the past two years as they only exist in structures without teachers to teach the pupils due to nonpayment of salaries, no primary health centres for the past two years, pensioners are not being paid for the past 12 months; there’s no judiciary for the past eight months due to nonpayment of their salaries and no development anywhere in the state. Everything in Kogi State is in comatose and the people of Kogi State are despondent,” Ali further said.

Another group, Kogi State APC Stakeholders Forum in a petition also said: “Governor Yahaya Bello was never elected by the good people of Kogi State. The death of Abubakar Audu made it possible for Bello to be Kogi State Governor. He has shown everyone that he lacks leadership abilities. He can’t fight for the rights and privileges of Kogi people.

“For the past 38 months, including February 2019, Governor Yahaya Bello has not paid full salaries to the workers of Kogi State, despite the fact that the state received full allocation from the Federation Account as detailed below: Statutory allocation, Excess Crude and Value Added Tax (VAT) (N132b); Internally Generated Revenue by the state (N51b); total allocations to local governments (N111b).

“Total funds received by the state and local governments: N294 billion. The other funds received by the state are as follows: Bail Out (N20b); Paris Club refunds 1, 2, and 3 (N19b); and refunds for road construction by previous governments (N11b).

“The governor had conducted multiple staff screening for both the state and the local governments. And from the report of the screening, the monthly wage bill (state, local governments and pensions) at the inception of the administration stood at N5.8 billion. After screening, this figure reduced to N4.4 billion.

“It is evidently clear that the total revenue received by the state government was more than enough to settle all salaries, pensions and gratuities with huge balance remaining for overheads and capital projects,” he said.

The governor, also known as ‘the white lion’, is not spared by the main opposition PDP which is bent on sending him packing out of the Lugard House as the party’s State Publicity Secretary, Bode Ogumola recently said: “It is shameful that in four years, Bello could not invite President Buhari for inauguration of any project nor any of the governor’s colleagues to inaugurate projects initiated and completed by his administration.”

Ogumola asked Bello to forget a second term after his monumental and woeful performance as, “Kogi people are wiser and so are not ready to go through another round of no salaries, no pension, harvest of suicide, no infrastructure development, but government sponsored thuggery and violence”.

Beyond poor performance and intra as well as inter party opposition mounted against Bello, his ethnic background as an Ibira man is a serious factor standing on his way to success after winning the APC ticket.

In the PDP, there were all moves to ensure that an Igala indigene emerged winner of the party’s ticket to lock horns with Bello. In the build up to the party primary, seven aspirants had stepped down to pave the way, through the instrumentality of the former governor of the state, Captain Idris Wada. The aspirants, who stepped down are from the eastern part of the state.

After the maneuvering, the younger brother of the immediate past governor of Kogi State, Musa Wada emerged the PDP flagbearer.

Wada scored 748 votes, followed by Abubakar Idris with 710 votes, the former governor Captain Idris Wada came third, while Senator Dino Melaye came fourth.

The PDP, through Kola Ologbondiyan, the national publicity secretary, has said the party is sure of victory in the governorship poll coming November.

James Kwen & Solomon Ayado, Abuja