THE SECOND COMING OF GOV BELLO
One of the greatest wonders of the world is the recent ignoble return of the controversial and underperforming governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Adoza Bello. To the ruling party, it is a fait accompli; but to the teeming helpless ordinary people of Kogi State, there’s the palpable fear of another four years of political buffeting, emasculation, impoverishment, workers agony, governmental grandiloquence, youthful arrogance and juvenile tactlessness.
On whose interest does the return of GYB serve? Is the Party ego more paramount and important than the cry or well-being of the generality of the Kogi people? It is obvious that the meaning of the ambivalent of a mantra called Change is gradually coming home. Is this a change for the better or a change for the worse? What should we expect from GYB, this time around?
These are the tilting questions pivoting the mind of the average political watcher, especially in Nigeria.
This writer is permanently bothered about the negative connotations and the wrong signals GYB’s emergence as his party flag bearer, in the first place, and his final return to power, is sending to our overall political system and posterity. GYB’s return makes it practically correct to assert that leadership recruitment in our clime has got nothing to do with capacity, intelligence, tact and performance. It has everything to do with the power bloc and the camp of the philosopher king one belongs to. Above all, it represents the collective ego, desire and desperation of a privileged party to insert her claws continually on the pie not minding her hungry contemporaries.
The feelings and wishes of the people have become inconsequential as long as the desires of party kingpins are adequately satisfied. This is the reality of today’s party politics in Nigeria.
Gov. Bello may be the metaphor for today’s discourse, but looking beyond him to the unforeseeable political future where excellence, competence and patriotism is placed above primordial considerations should be the concern and the focus of every true Nigerian.
While many may call my postulations and position here a diatribe, it should be noted that evil prevails and dominate when good men say or do nothing. I may not be from Kogi State, yet the scenario in Kogi is but a microcosm and a statistical representation of the general woe bedeviling the Nigerian state on one hand, and the dangerous precedence it has set for the political future of our dear nation, on the other.
Let someone help me tell GYB that he’s the luckiest youth on the face of the earth today and as such, has the unique and rare opportunity to right every wrong that history has written about him. Let the celebration be short-lived and let him get down to business immediately. He must not only be seen as hitting the ground running, but hitting the sky flying. To stumble twice upon the same stone given the same circumstances is a proverbial disgrace.