Prince Mustapha Mona Audu, governorship aspirants in the forthcoming gubernatorial poll in Kogi has again cautioned the All Progressives Congress (APC) against handing its ticket to incumbent governor Yahaya Bello, if it hopes to retain the state come November 18.

The aspirant has also urged Kogi State traditional rulers who had visited the presidential villa on Monday to beg on behalf of the incumbent governor to return to their domains and join the vanguard to salvage Kogi State and not destroy it.

Kogi State, he lamented, is now known for all that is bad, ranging from years of unpaid salaries, high mortality rate and incessant cases of suicides.

He chided the traditional rulers for desecrating their exulted stool by embarking on self-serving, hunger- induced trip to the presidential villa, and wondered when it has become the

duty of traditional rulers to introduce a governor to the president.

“Unfortunately, what we saw (at the villa) was a display of the level of poverty that is going on in Kogi State of today. The traditional rulers have no business in the presidency, seeking support or seeking to reintroduce a governor that is supposedly the first son of the president.

“We do not believe that the traditional rulers that were at the villa were a representation of the people of Kogi State. That is the truth; we have to be honest with ourselves. These rulers are setting a very bad example; these rulers are showing us that their pockets are more important than the lives of their people.

“Kogi State is a state where civil servants are committing suicide, just a week and a half ago, a lady, a civil servant received an alert on her phone, went to the bank, it was a false alert. She dropped dead! People are putting ropes and jumping from trees, from buildings. Never before has this been our history. So our traditional leaders should go back home and try and alleviate the pains of their people. They don’t need to introduce the governor to the president, no governor needs any introduction before the president,” he said.

Prince Audu, the scion of the late former governor Abubakar Audu, told journalists in Abuja that Kogi State is dire need for leadership, saying his mission to seek the position occupied by governor Yahaya Bello is borne out of urgent need to correct the wrong notion and impression created by the incumbent governor that the youths cannot provide leadership.

Unveiling a concise economic blueprint and investors’ partway towards launching Kogi on the part of prosperity, Prince Mustapha Audu said he has the capacity, the exposure, the knowhow and team that will reverse the state from a hopeless course it is headed.

“We are here to say that this is a second chance for the youths, not just the Youths in Kogi State but youth of Nigeria. If we do not fix the notion of incompetence of the youth, no one can fix it. If we don’t change this idea that the youth cannot lead, no one else will. The onus lies with us to change this, create a better Nigeria through purposeful leadership in Kogi State.

He said that having traversed the state door to door in the last five elections in Kogi, he is abreast of the challenges facing the people of the state.

Consequently, he said his team has developed an “economic blueprint which identifies five major steps that will be taken towards development of Kogi State.

According to the blueprint an investors partway he said has identified a list of 31 minerals that are found in commercial quantity in Kogi state, while emphasis would be given to the agricultural and tourism potential of the state, promising to run an inclusive government that will tap the huge potential of the youth and women.