November 2023 is around the corner and ground works are underplay among the political gladiators in an attempt to claim the biggest seat in Kogi state. Going by antecedent, the confluence state was created in 1991 and ever since, governors have been elected from all the three senatorial districts except from the West. Kogi is blessed with both human and material resources, yet the state cannot be placed where the founding fathers projected it to be. The citizens cannot enjoy better lives and in the list of the top 20 richest states in Nigeria, Kogi is nowhere to be found.
In Nigeria, people are now interested in election matters and have become more wise in choosing their leaders. As the Kogi governorship election draws nearer, the environment is becoming more heated. Alhaji Usman Ododo of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Murtala Ajaka of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Dino Melaye, have all set to battle it out at the polls.
When it comes to governance, the best metrics to measure performance is good service delivery to the people. Anything short of this amounts to bad governance. Govenor Yahaya Bello has anointed a candidate from his party to carry on his legacy and critics are of the views that the administration has performed woefully and do not wish to witness a repetition.
A lot has happened in the almost eight years of the APC led administration especially with the prolonged screening of civil servants where many spent months without salaries and speculations that some local government workers received peanuts of N2500 as monthly pay. In terms of basic infrastructure, there is inadequate road networks which has made the transportation of farm produce from rural to urban areas impossible.
The educational level is low as primary school pupils still sit on bare floors to learn. This is not to talk of the limited electricity supply and poor healthcare facilities. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Kogi state has a poverty rate of 49.8%, which is higher than the national poverty rate of 40.1%.
The NBS also reported that the state has a high rate of unemployment with 39.0%. All these are signs of bad leadership and if things are to go by the present voting pattern of Nigerians where non performing leaders are voted out, then the Kogi opposition could possibly have upper hands at the polls.
However, when it comes to security, the present administration cannot be said to have performed badly. This is because the governor has done much to secure the state by empowering the local vigilantes and involving traditional rulers to act as watchdogs of their respective localities. Also, the invention of EBIGO is an initiative that further brought unity into the state. The APC is using this area as one of the biggest achievements of the Yahaya Bello administration and they can leverage on this to get the people’s votes.
Another dimension which this election has taken is ethnicity and tribalism. Interestingly, the three leading candidates are from the three major tribes in the state. Each of the tribes is having the “our turn” syndrome. It is either “Igala agenda” or “Ebira agenda”. The only agenda that is not so loud is Okun agenda.
Meanwhile, judging by the voting pattern from the last election in 2019 which had the incumbent Governor Bello, an Ebira man from the Central, and Musa Wada, an Igala from the East as the main opposition, one could easily detect where the winner would come from. Bello enjoyed massive support from his people as he won landslide with 265,879 votes against Wada’s 26,997 votes.
The Igala equally supported their own as Musa Wada scored 124,890 votes to defeat Yahaya Bello in that axis who scored 90, 317 votes. Even with PDP having its deputy from the west, APC still won that district with the margin of 12, 228 votes.
Currently, the situation is the same and at the same time different. The three major tribes are vying for the office and the chance of winning is open to all. Tension upon tension, no one can say who the winner is for now. It is Yahaya Bello against others and he has vowed to win the seat for his party. Let’s see who dares to stop the “white lion”.
– Adama Umar Ayuba wrote from Kano.