Kogi: A Different Country

On January 27, 2016, Yahaya Bello, the curious inheritor of the apparent victory of Abubakar Audu and James Faleke in the November 21, 2015 governorship election the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in its wisdom declared inconclusive, was inaugurated as the governor of Kogi State. Indeed, since the supplementary poll of December 5, 2015 which, in the short term, cleared INEC’s air of inconclusiveness in the election, notable politicians from the state, particularly elements in the All Progressives Congress (APC), and perhaps more loudly those that decamped from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have been crowding round Bello and dressing him in oversized robes of praise words the way Nigerian politicians know how to. Since his inauguration last week, however, Bello must be giddy from the antics of the toads of power that croak and cringe around him. As Bello became overly emotional while reading his inauguration speech, there was the temptation, a fleeting one, to be moved but for the realisation that for the people of Kogi, the change of government they had so desired and strived strenuously to effect, still remained inconclusive. Four things stand out in a general election Bello neither contested nor campaigned to win but for which he was declared winner.

1) Travesty in excelsis:

There were serial acts of travesty between the November 27, 2015 election and Bello’s inauguration last week. One, the INEC declared an election that had apparently been won and lost as inconclusive. To underline INEC’s perfidy, the total votes cast in the December 5, 2015 supplementary election were far less than 15,000 while the APC Audu/Faleke ticket was leading the PDP Idris Wada/Yomi Awoniyi ticket by over 40,000 votes in the original election declared inconclusive. Two, following Audu’s sudden death, Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Justice Minister Abubakar Malami, in a hasty legal opinion while the APC was still in the process of picking a replacement candidate, said that participation in party primaries is a prerequisite for governorship elections. Malami did not seem to know or have the maturity to realise that as Justice Minister and Attorney General, his legal opinion was bound to unfairly affect the process of an election whose eventual outcome would obviously generate a rash of litigations at the Election Petitions Tribunal. Three, the APC national leadership, without consultation and without care, thereafter picked Bello who came second to Audu in the primaries as the substitute candidate. Four, Bello contested the supplementary election without a running mate as Faleke who was paired with him had earlier notified the APC and INEC of his withdrawal. Five, INEC declared Bello governor-elect on the strength of what the PDP had described as a paltry 6,885 votes he scored at the supplementary polls, having inherited some 240,000 votes in the main election he was not involved as a candidate or running mate or supporter or canvasser. Six, Bello’s administration was inaugurated last week without a deputy governor. The combination of all these travesties must have made The Nation newspapers Managing Director Victor Ifijeh mock me, a Kogi indigene, as coming from a different country. Indeed Kogi State is practising a different variant of presidential democracy in a different country.

2) Pawn in a game-board:

The Kogi situation is one more example that the APC, just like the PDP before it, is rather than being a political party, no more than a common platform for different and even conflicting political groups to seize power. And having succeeded in seizing power, the constituent groups of the party are now set in default mode, griping and scratching and biting one another. In a way Bello is a pawn in a bigger political game. There is a whispering campaign that President Muhammadu Buhari was the puppeteer when Malami used his office to advance partisan interest with his legal opinion on the process of picking the APC substitute candidate. The party was not disposed to picking Faleke, who represents Ikeja Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, because he is a member of the political family of Bola Tinubu, the APC national leader. Making Faleke the substitute candidate following Audu’s death, a logical and justiciable option being a joint ticket, was interpreted as giving Tinubu a foothold in the north, an uncomfortable scenario for Buhari’s political group. Bello is therefore a pawn in the political game-board and permutations for 2019. It would be interesting to see how far the pettiness in the decision of the APC leadership will stand judicial scrutiny.

3) Minorities, what minorities?:

Perhaps due to the long campaign for power shift from the Igala in Kogi East to the Ebira in Kogi Central or Yoruba in Kogi West, Bello’s supporters have attempted to spin his incongruous emergence as the realisation of power shift to the minorities. This lie needs to be nipped in the bud before it is sold as truth. It is dishonest to describe any of the ethnic nationality in Kogi State as majority and the others minorities. The fact is that the three groups in the state are all minorities where not one is totally dominant the way the Tiv are in Benue State. Although the Igala have a slight majority, they cannot produce the governor without going into an alliance with either of the Yoruba or the Ebira. Kogi East has successfully produced the governor since 1999 because the Igala are better at leveraging on group identity for political advantage than their Ebira in Kogi Central, and particularly the Yoruba in Kogi West. During the diarchy arrangement of the Babangida administration in 1991, Audu was voted governor on the platform of the National Republican Convention (NRC), to borrow a football lingo, against the run of play, as the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which was the dominant party in the state at the time, was riven by internal crisis. The petty quarrel among top politicians in the PDP, again the dominant party in the state in 1999, equally led to Audu’s victory at the polls on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). Even when there was an elite consensus to stop Audu’s re-election in 2003, the inability or refusal of politicians from the West and Central to step down for one another led to Ibrahim Idris from Kogi East, relatively unknown in the PDP at the time, picking the party ticket and being elected governor. The last APC primaries that produced Audu owed largely to the rash of aspirants from both the Central and West.

The Igala domination of the last 16 years is not so much because of their majority but because of the arrogance and poor strategic thinking of the political elite in the Central, and more particularly the West. The most fractious of the Kogi political elite are the Okun Yoruba in the West Senatorial District. They have the crab mentality, always ready to prevent others in the group from having what they cannot have. Factions among them have provided the noisiest support base for Bello, just as some other factions formed the political backbone of Wada, and before him, Idris, even forming what was then known as the Ibro Family. They have no problem sacrificing the larger interest of their people for their personal interest. Today, we know those who will rather Faleke failed in becoming governor so they will be positioned to join the governorship fray in 2019. We know those who will suffer any indignity to get an appointment or win a contract they have no intention of executing. We know those who, in retirement, are prepared to say anything to be noticed by Bello.

4) And the suffering continues:

The change in the direction of government which the people expected when they voted out Wada may not be realisable that soon. Bello would likely be constrained by the circumstances of his emergence. His administration would be heavily distracted by the legal challenges from Faleke and Wada at the Election Petitions Tribunal. A quantum of the little revenue from the federation account may be applied for the settlement of hefty legal fees. In a civil service state already in arrears of several months of workers’ salaries, the year is likely to be very gloomy for the people.

What is not in doubt is that Bello will more likely than not end up an interim governor. It would be very difficult to constitutionally, legally and morally justify the serial travesties that have sired his administration, even going by the unpredictability of the court rulings in the election petitions decided so far. Even in the unlikely event that Faleke does not get a decision in his favour, the court may call for a rerun. And should that happen, Bello would stand no chance as the Igala usual masterful leverage on group identity for political advantage combined with the disappointment, if not anger, of Audu/Faleke’s supporters could bring Wada back to office. For the state, that would be very unfortunate.