IN his desperate bid to stave off the disaster his recall from the senate would signify for his political career, Dino Melaye (APC-Kogi West) has assembled a posse of public relations mercenaries to sway the shifting loyalties of the public to his side and take the fight to Governor Yahaya Bello, the man masterminding his woes. Mr Bello is fairly anonymous, almost as if he lives and works in a cosmic black hole. He is so ideologically barren and devoid of human feelings that it is a wonder he ever had the presence of mind to even contest for the Kogi State governorship in 2015. He of course did not win, but through a series of convoluted machinations by the All Progressives Congress (APC), the young pretender soon found himself in the State House in Lokoja. At his shambolic inauguration boycotted by the movers and shakers of the APC, he was supported by the rambunctious Senator Melaye, 43, who delivered a stirring but entirely vacuous speech.
Barely a year later, the two men fell out for a number of reasons, all quite self-serving. With each passing day, the animosity between the two men has grown in amperage to the point that the state is now aflame. From Abuja, Sen Melaye also masterminded a potpourri of measures and inspired a host of statements all designed to undermine Mr Bello and possibly get him impeached. The governor would have been deserving of impeachment, for his incompetence is of such intensity that the state is truly and unquestionably groaning in mess. But from Lokoja, the state capital, in addition to assassination bids of undetermined origin, Mr Bello has himself inspired a more effective political chicanery designed to recall Sen Melaye and put paid to his political career. The ostensible reason for the recall plot is the senator’s embarrassing theatrics, loutish behaviour, and despicable loyalties and interactions. Neither combatant is more likely than the other to win in this deathly struggle.
From all indications, Mr Bello, despite the loathing Kogites have for him, will serve out his tenure. He will not get a second term, however, regardless of the thuggish youth groups he is assembling and training for future electoral shenanigans. Unseating a serving governor, as everyone knows, is a difficult, if not impossible, enterprise. Former president Olusgeun Obasanjo succeeded in unhorsing a few governors because he went outside the constitution to consummate that political malfeasance. Unseating a senator is also by no means an easy task. There are all sorts of legal and constitutional roadblocks, and of course extralegal obstacles too, some of which Sen Melaye has enacted with practiced ease over many years of thuggish but exhilarating politicking.
With the two politicians matching each other in their infamy, it is surprising that Kogi State, not to say Kogi West senatorial district where Sen Melaye hails from, should find it befuddling to take sides. Both Sen Melaye and Mr Bello are undesirable; but it is not difficult to settle the precedence between the two. Mr Bello’s damaging impact on the state is impossible to quantify. He is destroying everything in his path. And, to boot, he is destroying everyone close or far from him. Everything he touches turns to dust in the state. On the other hand, despite his comical politics and infuriating attachments and statements, Sen Melaye’s influence is not as destructive in its impact on the state as Mr Bello’s. What is even more worrisome is the close inverse relationship between the victory of one and the defeat of the other. Should Sen Melaye win, and it is hard to see him unseating Mr Bello despite the unalloyed support from the state chapter of the APC, the consequences for the state would be manageable. But should Mr Bello win, it is not only Sen Melaye who will probably and deservingly go to jail, the state itself would be shackled, castrated and humiliated beyond human endurance.
Given this zero-sum game, it is hard to understand why Kogi political and business elites have been both timid and undiscerning in determining whom to back. Sensing their customary diffidence, not to say their constant ideological and philosophical pusillanimity, Sen Melaye tried last week to force the hands of the fence sitters from Kogi West, particularly the elite from the Okun speaking part of the state. In a badly worded press release, the Okun Development Initiative (ODI), doubtless working for the senator, sensibly suggested that it was more desirable to support Sen Melaye than back Mr Bello. Proudly affirming Okunland’s ideological and political independence, the ODI told the world that while they would not dispute the weaknesses of Sen Melaye, the region was quite capable of independently unseating its representatives whenever they desired. It was apparent the ODI knew instinctively that Mr Bello’s victory in the titanic clash with the uppity senator would spell far worse doom and tragedy for the state. Their logic is unimpeachable. Mr Bello is a far more pressing danger to the state than Sen Melaye.
The relatively unknown ODI, however, attributed their statement to some of Okunland’s well-known leaders, including Prof Eyitayo Lambo, a former Health minister, Bayo Ojo (SAN), a former Justice minister and attorney general of the federation, Julius Oshanupin, a retired general, and Tunde Ipinmisho, a former editor. It turned out that the four neither signed the statement nor knew anything about it. They were therefore right to refute the statement; but it is not clear why they did not go further to give their perspectives on the battle between the two undesirables. Other than declaring their reluctance to be drawn into the ‘mess in Kogi’, they seemed to be indifferent to the need to come down from the fence and help Okunland — and by extension Kogi West — to make up its mind on the delicate issue of offering a nuanced support to one of the combatants.
Before the combat developed into a stalemate, Kogi elites from all the senatorial districts ought to have courageously made their voices heard. Instead, they pulled their punches, and appeared to surrender to the likes of Sen Melaye the leadership of fighting Mr Bello. The senator may lack the integrity to engage and even lead the noble fight, but the objective of calling Mr Bello to account is indeed a just one. Kogi should be able to make that distinction. More, they should be able to recognise that while Sen Melaye’s national buffooneries should be execrated, it can at least be tolerated. What is indeed intolerable is Mr Bello’s incompetence which has led to wholesale despoliation of the state, the destruction and indirect killing of unpaid workers, and the general retrogression of the state at a time when many other states are making great strides.
The Okun Development Initiative doubtless works for Sen Melaye, and may be as disreputable as the senator himself. But the group has drawn attention to the need for everyone in Kogi State, and in particular Okunland, to make a choice, even if it is Hobson’s choice. Neutrality is deprecated. By failing to side with one camp does not mean the two combatants will mutually self-destruct. They will not. Instead, one side will win; but it may be the wrong side. It is not too late for Okunland and Kogi in general to take sides. Okuland may have been guilty of many things in the past, including their indefensible timidity borne out of many years of exasperating caution and poor judgement, they must never let it be said of this generation that they allowed, by unintelligent default, the likes of Mr Bello to determine for them their choice of representatives. ODI made this point well.
Okunland, as much as the national APC, was complicit in the controversial enthronement of Sen Melaye. Worse, by keeping quite in the face of his national tomfooleries, when they should have on their own agitated for Kogi West to recall him or put pressure on him to tone down his idiotic politics, they indirectly gave room for Mr Bello to captain a cause that resonates with Nigerians who neither know the circumstances and intricacies of Kogi politics nor have an understanding of the consequences of allowing Mr Bello succeed in the plot to recall the noisome senator. The choice is simple and the priority clear: ensure that for now Mr Bello loses the recall gambit, and then later ensure that both the governor and senator never smell the corridors of power ever again. Both men are unqualified to represent themselves, not to talk of either Kogi West or the state as a whole.
