It has come to the attention of the Kogi PDP Presidential Campaign Council of a Press Release which acknowledges the provisions of the
Signage Bill hurriedly put together and signed into law recently by the
Kogi State House of Assembly.
In the release, the Media Directors of
the APC calls for its implementation by its campaign councils at all levels.
In its justification, the Directorate finds nothing wrong with the law
which according to it is meant to increase the IGR of the State and
sanitize the environment.
However, The media head of the state campaign council , Austin Ochu says for any discerning mind, raising the signage fee for billboards
out of the reach of the other opposition parties but the APC that has
unfettered access to State resources remains preposterous.
It is indeed
curious to know that the law is making its debut at the dawn of
electioneering where it is evident that the due process of such law
making was not observed, thus making the whole process to be shrouded
in secrecy.
This raises some fundamental questions as to where and when the
invitation to the public hearing were advertised and whether the
ingredients of the said law also affect other advertisers who are not
politicians.
Is the law targeted at political candidates or political
parties? Since APC, with unfettered access to the State treasury has
already undertaken to pay, is it doing so on behalf of its candidates or
the law requires the party to pay?
If the law is targeted at the parties, can candidates be held responsible
and penalized for the infringement of political parties and vice versa
since they are distinct juristic entities?
Is the regulation of the activities of political parties under the exclusive
or concurrent legislative lists? Is the State empowered to legislate to
regulate the activities of political parties, define offences for them and
prescribe penalties under the law?
These are questions that beg for
answers and which are indicative that the APC in the State have
engineered a deliberate discriminatory policy contrived to provide excuses to unleash violence on other members of other political parties
under the guise of enforcing the law.
This gives credence to the outcry of Labour Party last week when the
Bill boards of its House of Representatives candidate in Olamaboro
Federal Constituency was vandalized by identified thugs of APC allegedly
deployed by the Deputy Governor as well as that of PDP candidate
Joshua Adejoh whose bill boards were also destroyed.
By this law, the APC is playing the ostrich and displaying vestiges of a
drowning party looking to hold on to any flowing object, to stay alive.
Having failed abysmally to deliver the dividends of democracy to the
people in the last more than seven years, the electorate are looking up
to the next election to make a bold statement, and to tell the world that
no amount of intimidating and unpopular law can suppress the will of the
people to consign APC in the State to the dustbin of history.
The grand standing of the APC in the State notwithstanding, the
electorate in the State are set to prove that winning an election is not a
function of the billboards mounted by the government candidates but
how much the government has done to curry the sympathy and
confidence of the people it is set out to govern.
The State Assembly, in its own characteristic manner has proven its
time-tested image of puppet assembly in the hands of the APC
government that can be used to churn out unpopular laws against the
people they were elected to serve. The mounting of billboards across
the length and breadth of the State only by the APC candidates is a
clear indication that democracy is on holiday in Kogi State.
It will only
take the will of a determined electorate to restore sanity in this clime,
and the PDP in the State has no doubt that the first test of that resolve
as a people is around the corner, come February, 2023.