Okun Development Association is the umbrella organisation articulating the interest of Okun and Oworo people in Kogi State. When its leaders recently paid a visit to Governor Idris Wada in Lokoja, the state capital, they protested the marginalisation of Yoruba in the state and offered suggestions on peaceful coexistence among the diverse ethnic groups, Their views on the national conference is contained in their memorandum to the governor. Excerpts:
When Kogi State was created about 22 years ago, the Yoruba in the state had high hopes. Coming out the bitter experiences in the old Northern Region and Kwara State, and judging by its rich human and natural endowments, the state had very high potentials to be viable, if its human and natural resources were fully mobilised, deployed, distributed and exchanged, in the spirit of equity, fairness and justice.
We have disturbing facts and figures about the way our state is going and as responsible stakeholders, we agreed among ourselves that we should, before anything else, meet with you and share the information with you. We came to Lokoja, believing strongly that: (a) Your Excellency wishes to promote the advancement and socio-economic uplift of the entire citizenry of the State in which the Okun people constitute an invaluable and principal actor. (b) Given the considerable level of frustration of our people, a forum like this would provide the Governor a veritable platform for a clearer perception of their feelings and accord our people their proper role that would engender patriotism in the interest of greater harmony and cohesion in the state.
We wish to acquaint you with some of the sore concerns of our people and their present level of alienation and grave disadvantage, experienced perennially from manifest inequity, unfairness and marginalization in the scheme and skewed process of governance, especially from the aegis of the civilian administrations in the State since 1991 when Kogi State was created.
Successive civilian governments in the state have compounded the trend of marginalization to a level that has become intolerable to the generality of our people. This is why we have decided to bring to the notice of the governor, the deplorable state of affairs meted out to our people by the state, with the hope that you will take urgent steps to reverse their fortunes positively. We have done this order to bring home palpably and unmistakably, the enormity of the inequity in the distribution of amenities, infrastructure, appointments and public goods suffered by our people relative to other pillars of the state and the East Senatorial District in particular.
Our state is ailing and the ship of state is being assailed by a potentially disruptive storm. And we daresay that much of the adversity that afflicts the state is self-inflicted.
Kogi State is built on three pillars of East, Central and West senatorial districts. These are like the three engines of a wide-bodied aircraft.
Society thrives best if it upholds the time-tested principles of equity, justice and fairness. A man who has three wives, but chooses to fend for the needs of only one of them and her offspring would be deliberately inviting trouble into his own home.
Based on repeated vicious circle of mistreatment, the average Okun citizen has become cynical, to the extent that he/she believes that there are positions in this State that he/she cannot and, indeed dare not, aspire to occupy simply by virtue of the place of his/her birth, curiously in a democratic/civilian government.
No Okun person has ever been the Chief Executive of this state. No Okun citizen has been a substantive Accountant-General or the Permanent Secretary, Government House Administration. Our numerical strength in the work force has continued to acutely decline, even in the education sector where we undoubtedly excel above other groups in the state.
We now, more concretely present illustrated profile of the state of unequal but conscious pattern of distribution of amenities, positions and offices in the state.
Political Appointments: Of a weighted total of 293 political appointments by the Government of Kogi State, Kogi East carries the lion’s share of 166, Kogi Central has 51 and Kogi West takes 71. This amounts to 56.6 per cent for the East Senatorial District.
Staff Disposition in the Civil Service: We are alarmed by the dwindling presence and influence of our people in the state civil service and unless urgent steps are taken to address the situation, the prospects are grim for us. At the creation of the state in August 1991, the size of the civil service stood at 19,806. Of this, Kogi East had 9,769 (about 49 per cent); Kogi West, 8,244 (about 41 per cent) while Kogi Central had 1,995 (about 10 per cent) members of staff. However, by 2013, the work force had ballooned to 35,209 (an increase of almost 78 per cent). Out of this, Kogi East has 24,621 (about 70 per cent); Kogi West, 6,519 (almost 19 per cent) while Kogi Central has 4,069 (almost 11 per cent). These figures show that while the relative share of the Igala/Bassa group has shot up consistently, that of the Okun/Lokoja/Kotonkarfe group stagnated for a while before it began to dwindle dangerously.
Civil Service Appointments (Directorate Cadre): Out of 637 positions, Kogi East carts 318, Kogi Central takes 124 and Kogi West gets 195. Kogi East sweeps nearly 50 per cent of the total directorate level positions in the civil service.
Kogi State University: Although its name suggests that this institution belongs to and is indeed funded with the resources of the entire state, the staffing at all levels seems to portray it as belonging to Kogi East alone. All the vice chancellors of the university so far have been Igala. The same goes for the Director of Works. The Registrar and Librarian of the institution are at present also from Kogi East. Of the total staff strength of 1,516 in the university, 1,118 or 73.7 per cent are from Kogi East, Kogi Central has 62 (4.09 percent), Kogi West has 115 or 7.6 per cent while non indigenes constitute15.2 per cent of the work force with 230. Of the total senior staff of 855, Kogi East with 486 takes the lion’s share of 56.7 per cent, Kogi Central has 43 (6.8 per cent), Kogi West, 105 or 16.6 per cent while non indigenes with 221 make up the balance of 25.9 per cent. The picture for junior staff is per haps benumbing to say the least. Kogi East takes up 632 (94 per cent) of the total of 661. Kogi Central has 19 (2.8 per cent); Kogi West has 10 (1.5 per cent) while non indigenes with nine make up the balance of 1.4 per cent.
Of all the Secretaries to the State Government appointed in the life of the State, Kogi East has occupied the position seven times; Kogi Central, two times and Kogi West thrice.
Accountant-General: All officers that have occupied this critical position, except for once by Kogi Central have been from Kogi East.
Of the 18 Honourable Commissioners in the State, nine are from Kogi East, five from the West and four from Central Districts respectively. Kogi East takes 50 per cent of the allocation. Indeed, in clear departure from the letter and the spirit of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, one of our local government areas, Ijumu has no Commissioner in Your Excellency’s cabinet. This is a disturbing aberration, regardless of how it came about.
Office of the Head of Service: Four of the most critical positions here are the Head of Service, the Permanent Secretary Administration, Director of Administration and the Director of Staff Welfare are all held by people from Kogi East! They determine posting, staff welfare and accommodation. Two of the other positions are held by Kogi Central and only one post is held by Kogi West.
Government House: Even at the Government House here, there appears to be a deliberate and total lock-out of non-Kogi East persons in critical career and appointive positions. Indeed, the occupation of other ethnic groups except from Kogi East of the major offices has become a customary misnomer. We are aware that the positions of Chief of Staff to the Governor, Permanent Secretary, Administration and Director-General (Protocol) are held exclusively by people from the East senatorial district. The recent promotion of the erstwhile Director-General, Protocol to the position of Permanent Secretary and his subsequent transfer out of Government House presented an opportunity to give an Okun person who has been his deputy for years to assume the position. However, another officer of Kogi East extraction was hurriedly procured from another agency to take the position. Also the last time we checked, the Special Adviser, Special Duties (Government House), Special Adviser (Security) and the Special Adviser (Media) are all from the Igala/Bassa axis.
Ministry of Finance: Only the Commissioner of Finance and the Accountant-General attend federation account allocation meetings and they alone can ascertain State allocations from that account. The two of them are from Kogi East. Not only that, the Auditor-General is also from Kogi East.
Ministry of Local Government: All of the seven officers here are from Kogi East, including the Commissioner and Permanent Secretary as well as the Chairman, Local Government Service Commission.
Distribution of Permanent Secretaries in Kogi State Civil Service: Of the 36 Permanent Secretaries in the Civil Service, 18 are from Kogi East, eleven from Kogi West and seven from Kogi Central. Kogi East takes 50 per cent of the allocation.
The above statistics suffice to establish from these appointment and positional structures that Kogi East controls, firmly, all the administrative and financial machinery of the State. It is obvious that staff posting carried out by the office of the Head of Service is determined by ethnic imperative rather than by merit.
The general picture graphically presented here is skewed toward Kogi East in pattern and structure of appointment scale. This reveals that Kogi East maintains a drowning dominance over and above the two other Districts put together. Kogi East produces, generally over almost 70 per cent of the State’s work-force. This runs grossly foul of the quantity and quality of the productivity scale of the populace. This grave imbalance bespeaks inequity and gross injustice such that provides a recipe for social discontent, citizen alienation and insecurity, if not promptly addressed by a responsive government as we believe your administration is poised to be portrayed before the citizens of the state across board and before the national spectrum.
Security
Your Excellency, a critical index of good governance, globally, is the state of security of lives and property. Today, Okunland is the most insecure segment of the State. Armed robbers are on perennial prowl on all the roads that lead to Okunland from Lokoja (through Obajana and Okene) and from Ilorin (through Eruku/Egbe). People commute these roads with the greatest trepidation and justifiable fear, at all times of the day. In the towns and villages in Okunland, there is no guarantee of security of lives and property. Banks are incessantly robbed with numerous lives lost and money looted by gun-running persons to the extent that, virtually all banks are shut to customers on a near-permanent basis and transactions are hardly possible.Our findings from the Army and Police authorities confirmed that they lack adequate vehicles and appropriate logistics to carryout regular patrols in the area.
Unemployment
Okunland faces a very grave unemployment crisis, particularly among the youth.
Your Excellency is well aware of the communicational and economic importance of road access in the lives of people. It not only enhances social interaction and exchange, it enhances economic growth, especially in economies like ours whose mainstay is agriculture. There is a crucial road infrastructure deficit in Okunland. All roads linking the various communities and all roads linking the people to the rest of Kogi State and its borders are virtually impassable. From Lokoja to Kabba, from Omuooke in Ekiti State to Kabba, from Ondo State via Ajowa and Ayere to Kabba, and from Ilorin via Egbe to Kabba, all the road networks are in acute stage of disrepair. Though some of the roads are said to be federal roads, yet we all know that it is not the federal government that plies those roads.
While available records show that 70 per cent of the state’s internally generated revenue is derived from Central and West senatorial districts, 80 per cent of capital projects are sited in East senatorial district. In many of our communities, people struggle daily with livestock to bail water from the streams that had been abandoned when, courtesy of the military administrations in Kwara State, potable water was available to them through boreholes.
Education
Today, there is no functioning tertiary institution, state or federal owned in Okunland. The College of Education (Technical) purportedly located in Kabba exists only in name. It has no structures, no teachers and no budgetary allocation. There is a sign board somewhere in Kabba announcing its presence but that is all there is to it.
Pension
The disarray in the administration of pension in the state deserves to be urgently remedied. There is a general feeling that the state has adopted the policy of non-payment of gratuity to retiring civil servants. For people to serve their state for 35 years and are thereafter thrown into the streets empty handed does not speak well of us as a people. The reward for service to the state should not be utter impoverishment.
Our prayers
Bold and urgent steps are taken to correct the patent lopsidedness in the distribution of political offices such that all parts of the state are made to have a sense of belonging. In particular, we demand that a Commissioner from Ijumu Local Government Area be appointed without further delay.
•The administration should take steps to halt the continued decimation of Okun and Oworo people in the civil service and that qualified and competent Okun and Oworo indigenes in the service are appointed into positions commensurate with their training and experience.
•Equal attention is given to the revival of decayed infrastructure in all parts of the state.
• Rather than the present approach of allocating political offices, we would like to recommend that all available positions be put in a basket and shared based on the principles of equity and fairness. In this regard, for instance, it should be possible to correct the misnomer in having both the Commissioners of Works and Finance come from the same district.
•Urgent steps are taken to reduce the current large number of Special Advisers, Senior Special Assistants and Special Assistants to the Governor.
The law establishing Kogi State University should be revised to facilitate decentralization of the institution to enable it fulfill the dreams of its founding fathers.
•This administration should commence payment without delay, of gratuity to civil servants who retired in the last two years and also sustain payment to those who retire forthwith. In addition, government should intensify steps to source funds to clear the backlog of gratuity to those who left service before the inception of this administration.
