When Governor Yahaya Bello took his oath of office as the governor of Kogi State on January 27, last year, no one was left in doubt that rocky days lay ahead. This is not only because of the circumstances surrounding his election, but also due to the indication he gave in his inaugural address that he was ready to tackle the old order, in his determination.
At the Confluence Stadium Lokoja, venue of his inauguration, the governor unveiled plans to authenticate the number of workers on government’s payroll, initiate reforms in the civil service and ensure probity in the public sphere. These, in a predominantly civil servants’ propelled economy, engendered panic, even some permanent secretaries were directed to proceed on their accumulated annual leave within the second week of the unfolding of the New Direction agenda mantra. At the inauguration were the labour leaders, who were battle-ready, owing to a backlog of issues they had with Bello’s predecessor, Idris Wada.
Bello may have foreseen their anger. He donated two 18-seater buses to them, which made them to soft-pedal, even though the Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Onuh Edoka, was harangued to go ahead and read the fiery speech they had prepared. But, the bite was no longer there; as the gift took the shine off their immediate problems.
But, there was also the lingering imbroglio in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state. This eventually culminated in the vote-of-no confidence passed on him by the Alhaji Haddy Ametuo-led State Executive Committee. Bello also opened other ‘war fronts’, including the inauguration of a committee to oversee the screening of workers or the verification exercise. The fallout of the exercise has continued to generate controversy.
Bello equally set up a commission of enquiry to probe the past administrations of former governors Ibrahim Idris and Wada. This development also ruffled some feathers.
Thus, in the course of the year, the efforts of the Bello administration in the areas of development appear to have been overshadowed by controversies, including the prolonged battle in the House of Assembly, over the choice of Speaker. This was finally laid to rest after months of acrimony.
Opinions are divided about the performance of the administration in the last one year. Some people are of the opinion that the administration has been working assiduously to make Kogi a better place, while others are disappointed over what they consider the state of inertia in the last one year.
To the pro-Bello group, it is only the perceived enemies of the state that have refused to see the strides achieved so far. But those against, including the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), see him as an autocrat that brusque no dissent.
For example, at one of its stakeholders’ meeting last year in Lokoja, the PDP said it will not be intimidated in the face of the hardship confronting Kogites, saying that the state at present is in the hands of tyrants.
At a stakeholders’ meeting of the Kogi West Senatorial district, held at the Rekiya Ogheha Place, some PDP members accused the administration of lacking regard for human lives, saying citizens are dying by the day, from common ailments, due to non-payment of their salaries. They said after a critical look of the APC government in the state that it is obvious that it came to spread poverty, hardship and sickness, because hundreds of people are dying on a daily basis, due to poor economic management and insensitivity on the part of the administration.
The Director-General, Media and Publicity to Governor Bello, Mr Kingsley Fanwo, however accused the PDP of being the architect of the rot in Kogi.
He accused the previous PDP administrations of being responsible for the rot the Bello administration is trying to clean, saying that the last PDP government left the state civil service morally broken, with workers not receiving salaries for months.
Fanwo said: “It is quite paradoxical; someone defecated on the floor and then turn around to blame the person parking it of being slow. We are aware that certain leaders are trying to gang up to stifle the resolve of the present administration to refocus the state and reset our prospect as a people. Governor Yahaya Bello is not expecting the PDP to be happy with his reforms and resolve to question previous administrations over how the commonwealth of the people was managed.”
He said Bello instituted the staff verification exercise to weed out thousands of ghost workers that were smuggled into the payroll of the state under the PDP administration.
He added: “When did the PDP become the advocates of the people they owed many months’ salaries? The PDP said that Kogi State has been turned into a punching bag by the APC.”|
But, the PDP insists that: “the Yahaya Bello administration is heartless, inconsiderate, insensitive, and irresponsive to the plights of Kogi civil servants. It has utterly failed the people as it is bereft of what to do to move the state forward.”
The party accused the APC of running a government of deceit and blackmail, saying that the new direction policy agenda of the Bello administration was aimed at strangulating the masses and making the poor poorer. It added that almost a year of the administration that nothing has been achieved, except “the rudderless screening”.
It condemned the frequent foreign trips of the governor, describing it as a flagrant abdication of his responsibility to give quality leadership and good governance.
Present at that meeting were former Deputy Chief of Staff in the presidency, Prince Sola Akanmode; former Secretary to the State Government, Chief Sola Ojo; former PDP state chairman, Chief Hassan Salawu; Hon. Henry Ojuola and Chief Kola Ojo, among others.
Protests have continued to greet the outcome of the workers’ screening and verification, with the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the higher institutions put on hold, shutting down the various campuses in protest against alleged non payment of salaries.
Even in the APC, there is division within the ranks of members, with its deputy governorship candidate of the party in the last governorship election, Hon. James Faleke, said there could not be any reconciliation without justice.
Faleke said he had never been involved in any reconciliation process with the government, because of the injustice perpetrated by the party. He spoke in Ogonicha, Ofu Local Government, at the one year remembrance ceremony for the late governorship candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu.
He said the logjam in the Kogi APC cannot be resolved, because of the way and manner the national leadership handled the issues that were generated following Audu’s death.
His words: “There can never be any reconciliation in a situation where somebody works from first day to the last day of the month and another person collects his salary. What can only be the basis for reconciliation is for the salary to be returned; that is the only reconciliation. We are prepared to go hungry for the next four years, but I can tell you that God sparing our lives, the song will change surely.”
Faleke said every “right-thinking person knows that the problem in the APC was a fallout” from the manner with which the national secretariat of the party handled the crisis following Audu’s death.
The former deputy governorship candidate noted that the development had affected the party negatively. He said: “The architects of the crisis in Kogi State started the imminent downfall of our party, the APC. The way and manner the issue of Kogi was handled was least expected of a political party. I have heard that one of the cabals said that the APC was just a gathering of some people, not yet a political party. I want to say that as far as what happened in Kogi State is concerned and how it is affecting the party, I am sure those in government can confirm that, all is not well within the party, because when you worked and some people are benefitting or reaping the fruits of your labour, they will know that all cannot be well and that is why they are not getting it right.
“It is one year after Audu and nothing seems to be moving; it has taken the state more than seven to eight months to screen workers and pay salary. Meanwhile, people have died through queuing or waiting for their names to be screened and those that had been screened have not collected their salary; you can imagine that certainly things are very bad, we know how much we spend to maintain our people, to keep them moving. What happened to us during the case and when we lost our leader one year ago and all the battles we went through in the legal process, the way and manner the court judgments came, the issues that were determined have shown that we are not in a party yet.
“You know that this party was formed by all of us; we contributed to it; it is not an animal farm; it belongs to everybody. It is only when they realise this that this party can move forward. If our people get paid, if our people are empowered and entrenched, I am sure the songs will change. But, as it is now, it is bad song.”
Academic and non-academic activities were paralysed in the institutions, as workers marched round the towns. They accused the government of misconduct and temporarily blocked the Lokoja-Abuja highway with their procession.
The protest followed the ultimatum given to government by the JAC over the alleged failure to pay some of their members that took part in the verification exercise.
The chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnic (ASUP), Sunday Boluwomi, accused the government of failure to pay the salaries of about 148 workers.
He vowed that the committee would embark on a five-day warning strike, if the government failed to meet their demands, adding that at the expiration of the warning strike an indefinite action would follow.
His words: “If our members are not paid by Monday, we will start five days warning strike and after that we will go for an indefinite one. It is the same students we are protecting that are accusing us; the same NAKOSS are the one that did not hear from us; they have their own parents somewhere and they are collecting salaries, but our members here were not paid for eight months. Many of them have withdrawn their children from school. We cannot train other people’s children when ours are suffering.”
Boluwomi said it was wrong for government to label members that were available every day, as ghost workers, after going through series of screening.
He added: “If they say there are ghost workers, we tell them we know genuine workers in our own place and these genuine workers have not been paid. If they have ghost workers, fine. The ones we know are not ghosts. We have more than 135 staff members that have not been paid; they are not ghosts, we know them, and we have their records. You don’t do an endless screening. If you go to some other states that have done screening, it doesn’t take them more than three months and they have results. Going back memory lane, it was Okuntimo that was the chairman (of the screening committee), he was sacked, another person came on board, he was sacked. Okolo is there now and up till today, they don’t have any result.
He added: “Those people they said are ghost workers or that have problems, they have not been able to identify the reasons why they have not paid them. If a screening committee is set up and you wind up, you said you have concluded your screening, but there should be a report. Up till today, there is no report about Kogi State Polytechnic. The screening cannot be endless; there must be time-frame that you carry out a particular screening. We want to say that we don’t believe in any screening again; they have done the first one, the second one and the third one. Everything they asked for have been submitted. Yet, no result. So, it cannot be an endless one; it is just a delay tactics to make sure they withdraw people unlawfully.
“With what is happening now, Kogi State will be drawn back in terms of academic pursuit. Accreditation is coming later this year and it means that all our courses will not be accredited and the implication is that the certificate they are carrying is more or less like fake.”
Bello claimed last December that he has paid all salaries of workers in Kogi State, following the conclusion of the screening exercise, which kicked-off early 2016.
At the threshold of Governor Bello as first year in office, the horizon appears a little hazy, just as sections of the populace continue to plead that the administration be given all the support required to move the state forward.
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