The unfortunate saga of the embattled former governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, typifies the tragedy public office has become in Nigeria. For so long, Nigerians have focused on Abuja and practically ignored what is going on in the states where political malfeasance and operational melodrama are taking place. And Bello painfully remains a living testimony of this. Beyond this, however, is that Bello has burst the myth that the younger generation would always fare better when given the opportunity to govern.
Bello ran Kogi State like his personal fiefdom and a conquered territory. He personalised governance, approximated the public till and gluttonously blurred the line between the state and self. He shamelessly unlaced the public purse strings to sort out his son’s school fees. He abandoned the very reason he was elected to serve and rather face unabashed pursuit of personal aggrandisement. Kogi became a land under mental siege as Bello ran amok as he became giddy with power. Yet, he forgot that he only had ninety-six months to be in saddle. To a false sense of longevity, they call it eight years. But it is mere 416 weeks. Or better still, a mere 2,912 day!
It is debatable if Yahaya Bello took this into consideration while he ran Kogi aground. Like many of his colleagues running the political show in Nigeria, Bello gamed the system enough to install a successor, Usman Ododo, another political misfit and intellectual dwarf who hid under the dubious cover of immunity to whisk his political benefactor away as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, ley siege to his (Bello’s) Abuja home. Bello might have escaped the clutches of the financial watchdog, but it was only for some time. Perhaps, if President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had been as ruthless and anti-process as the willy former general and two-term President, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ododo would have been made to feel the heat and hence, would have produced Bello in order to keep his own office or even live or free to complete his term.
Some have alleged political vendetta in the ordeal Bello is facing. They claim it was because he did not support Tinubu during the battle for the presidential ticket of the ruling APC in May 2022. And that, after Tinubu too had bought his way to the ticket, he (Bello) chose not to tow the path of party loyalty by supporting Tinubu during the election proper. In Nigeria’s jaundiced political environment, that was a political hara-kiri, especially if the person you chose not to support eventually breasted the tape of political triumph and assumed power. And since Nigeria’s own is an imperial presidency where all the machinery of power and apparatuses of state are at the beck and call of the president, he can deploy such either to truly sanitise the state or whip errant or deviant political irritants into line. Many are now saying Bello is a victim of such executive high-handedness and that Tinubu is just trying to punish him and politically put him out of circulation.
Of course, this warped narrative is being promoted by Bello’s supporters and leeches in Kogi State. Even the state House of Assembly abandoned serious business of legislation and chose to debate the Bello ordeal. They passed a resolution calling on the EFCC to obey the court order restraining it from arresting Bello. They also “advised” the anti-fraud body not to allow itself to be used as a tool to deal with real or perceived political foes. This was apparently referring to what was earlier mentioned that Bello’s supporters believe he is being victimised for the political choices he made in 2022 and 2023. But again, it is deeper than that.
They were silent when the Chairman of the EFCC, Ola Olukoyede, told the whole world that their man transferred $720,000 from the government’s coffers to a bureau de change operator to pay his son’s school fees in advance. This was shortly before leaving office.
“A sitting governor, because he knows he is going, moved money directly from government to bureau de change, used it to pay the child’s school fee in advance, $720,000 in advance, in anticipation that he was going to leave the Government House. In a poor state like Kogi, and you want me to close my eyes to that under the guise of ‘I’m being used.’ Being used by who at this stage of my life?”
In real sense, hardly could one also rule out victimisation; especially in a country where those who are close to government and are the good books of those holding the levers of power could get away with anything including broad day murder. But this begs the question in the case of the former governor of Kogi State. Bello is accused of diverting a sum of N80.2billion. In fact the EFCC planned to arraign him on Thursday, April 18, 2024 before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja. This was before the stand-off that led to his being helped to escape by his successor, Ododo. Before the stand-off, the EFCC had obtained a warrant from a Federal High Court in Abuja to apprehend the embattled former governor. The warrant was issued following an ex parte motion filed by the EFCC.
The height of his malfeasance and gross abuse of office was his paying a sum of $720,000 as advance payment for his son’s school fees at the American International School of Abuja. He allegedly took the money directly from the state coffers. Even the N80.2billion was the one that could be traced to him and his accomplices. There are other billions which would be untraceable. That is the tragedy of leadership in Nigeria.
And even at that, Bello did not just happen on Kogi State. He was a product of high stake politics, debased values and placement of personal interest above that which was noble. Bello was never in the reckoning for the governorship seat as at this time in 2015. The late Abubakar Audu had picked the ticket and had picked Abiodun Faleke, strangely a serving member of the House of Representatives in Lagos but who was a native of Kogi State, as his running-mate. Audu was one time governor of the state between 1991 and 1993 before the military took over. He was elected again in 1999 but was defeated in 2003. He was to try his luck in 2015 and was coasting home to victory before fate played a fast one on him and, by extension, Kogi State.
Audu had cast his vote in the election which took place on Saturday November 22nd, 2015. But shortly after he got home, he took ill and died. That was before the result of the election could be announced. And that was when brutal politicking took over. The election was not inconclusive but since he had not been sworn-in, it was claimed that Faleke could not inherit the votes and the mandate. Beyond that, key politicians in the Yoruba speaking part of Kogi were also working against Faleke as they reckoned that if he became governor, it would affect their own chances in future. On their own part, the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, kept Audu’s death under the wraps until after the results of the election would have been announced.
At the end of the day, through high-wire politics orchestrated in Abuja and with the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, being a willing tool, the 2015 governorship election in Kogi State was declared inconclusive with the APC opting to pick another candidate who happened to be a certain Yahaya Bello. The supplementary election took place in few wards and Bello inherited the late Audu’s votes. The rest, as they say, is history.
From all indications, Bello was ill-prepared for the office. He was exuberant. He was inexperienced and it was obvious that the office was bigger than him. But instead of rising up to the challenge the office presented, he chose to bring the office down to his diminutive level. Bello was 40 when he became governor. But he showed the old guard could even be better than the so-called new generation.
Bello was a poor advertisement for his generation. And that is very unfortunate. Today he is a fugitive. But the shame is that he can still game the system by walking free. He knows that is possible in a society where institutions are so weak that all it takes is just few phone calls for a murderer to get off the hook. There is no proof that Bello has not started pressing the right buttons and making important phone calls wherever he is holed up in.
And it may shock Nigerians that he might be wining and dining in Aso Rock in the next one year. That’s the tragedy of a lawless country.