I love Kogi State.
It’s alright if you don’t. Quite a lot of Kogites living outside the state are embarrassed to be from Kogi. And yes, if I wasn’t from Kogi, I’d probably be disgusted passing through whenever I traveled by the routes. Endless mud houses by the road sides, too many villages to count, unfinished road projects, concrete coverings on graves at the entrance to homes; a stenching state capital that doesn’t show any confluence of its colonial legacy and modernisation, a monstrously chaotic town planning or just montrous town disarray, excessive power outages (like the rest of Nigeria though), and a disordered commerce; very violence prone people in the central subregion, arrogance exuberant people in the eastern axis, and on the western axis a people who overcharge travelers for every service rendered them by the way, and to worsen the matter, the entire state has a very high daytime temperature.
But I am from Kogi, and #IAM4KOGI. I don’t know how to imagine not loving Kogi state.
I became 32 this past September, and I can point to a handful of significant work completed in the state or its cities, actually its towns since I left at 22 for university. Most of which were individuals rising up to the government’s supposed roles. Yes, the present administration finished paying off a lot of debt accrued to the previous governor’s projects, and then commissioned a water supply project in the capital that should but is yet to feasibly be a central source for watering the state capital (since citizens had gone decades digging boreholes and wells, or queuing with jerry cans and buckets under the irrationally hot 6:30am sunshine), and we now begin to ask questions left and right in the attempt to learn what the present state government. “As e be say we blind.” Hey, should we need to ask around before we know what was done for the people? for us?
Captain Idris Wada, the present governor of Kogi state must go. I never liked his predecessor, and I never had high hopes in him, as he was placed forcefully on Kogi’s 4 Million citizens by his predecessor. Do you need proof? Sorry I don’t have. Does anyone ever get proofs of electoral “menene” in Nigeria? Atiku by his boss’ directive imposed Ibrahim “Ibro” Idris on us and pushed out a man whom we never appreciated at the time of his governance, Prince Audu Abubakar, but now need frantically to do a 4 year quick fix.
I am not yet registered as member of any political party, neither am I a spokesman for any. Yes, soon I will register with one for good reasons. But I speak explictly, not for a party, neither for a candidate; I only speak for Kogi.
I love Kogi. I am deeply in love with my state of origin. Just days back, I found an apartment in Lokoja that I’d soon move into because I have chosen to actively be a part of the life of the subregion.
I have a daughter, and I want the best for her. Clearly I wouldn’t want her to become too comfortable building her life in another state, so sometime in the very near future she’d be living and schooling in Lokoja. But, what has the city or the state to offer her? What has the place to offer children today?
What has Kogi to offer businesses, businessmen, businesswomen? What has Kogi to offer entertainers, or entrepreneurs, or a regular person out there hustling to provide himself/herself a means for survival, or fend for their dependents daily?
Captain Idris Wada’s government does not care much for school teachers, both on state payroll and on Local Government Area payroll. Someone will be quick to say he built hostels in Kogi State University, and Kogi Polytechnic. He resuscitated Secondary Schools. Yea, so? Is that a privilege or a necessary right? If at the grassroots salaries are owed teachers, wouldn’t the pupils and students suffer? Can they be sustained with the hope they’ll be rewarded in heaven? Do we want our kids to buy flight tickets to study in heaven? Can the “leaders of tommorrow” (a cliché I hate to use) be left to the mercy of private schools? How many parents can afford private school tuition? And if the teachers do not have pupils and students, or a motivating pay (that oils the wheels of their vocation) whom do they inspire?
O, come on Josiah, the governor installed Metro Buses, and it has been helping the commerce of Lokoja. Well, news flash, Kogi state is bigger than Lokoja. Just as your stomach is larger than your breakfast alone. As you’d have to add lunch and supper to stay well fed and perform optimally, so a government would have to do more in Okene, Magongo, Iyara, Oshokoshoko, Idah, Ajaokuta, Ihima, Kabba, Koton karfe, Okengwe, and lots more towns and villages before Kogi can be a vibrant and thriving region. And it must be consistent, it must be sourced internally not from oil, the agencies in Kogi must come to life just as Lagos has set the precedent for the possibility of self-sustenance in Nigeria. Wada didn’t have a masterplan for the state nor was there one for him to have keyed into from Ibro. At least that’s easy to tell from how the governance went this past 4 years. And if there was a semblance of one, then it probably doesn’t make sense or was just not followed through.
Look, this present govenor received allocation in big billions. Who were the benefactors? For I heard he once said his life is endangered, as he has assassination plots against him if he worked in Kogi state. “Abeg o, na by force to stay as governor?” Couldn’t he have stepped down so someone more confident and daring (in fact, someone else anyways) became our governor if his life was more important than KOGI’s progress?
I don’t want to talk too much about all the things that could have been or not. Let’s face the circumstance of the close racing gubernatorial candidates: Captain Idris Wada and Prince Abubakar Audu are both men who’ve been in governance. As a matter of fact, Audu was previously in governance in the nineties, but that doesn’t cloud my view. In fact it emphasizes the points I’m yet to make. They both want to be our governor from now until sometimes in 4 years. They both can serve only four years. They are both Igalas. Quite obviously they both care in some way (I can measure by past deeds) about Kogi’s welfare. But we are at a point in Kogi’s story now where we need a start over. Yes, Kogi state needs a #StartOver, and seriously Idris Wada isn’t the best to take us through that. I prefer Prince Audu Abubakar between the two.
I must quickly state that I’m not oblivious to the presence of Philip Salawu via the Labour Party in the Gubernatorial race, I just don’t see any serious contention from him, so I am not even adding him to my essay.
When Audu Abubakar was rigged out of governance in April 2003, we were to go 12 shocking years without a caregiver. That’s a holistic caregiver, a state father figure, someone who worked up a blueprint for us as a state, not someone who pursued an agenda for a section of society, or elitist groups. Prince Audu Abubakar, let me call him PAA, was the brain behind many things that still stand out in Kogi state today. But for the sake of those who like focusing on Lokoja under Ibro and Wada, I will push the spotlight on Lokoja, our (dirty) cherished state headquarters.
When PAA was a Democratic governor from 1999 to 2003, Nigeria counted and made allocations in little billions. When he was governor, he built the Stella Obasanjo Library (I advice him to rename it when he wins this election as a revenge on baba Iyabo for rigging the election of 2003 against him), an edifice that its quality and value still stands true today. PAA dualised Lokoja’s major road (which is still the only linear thread of transportation from the northern entrance to the southern and eastern exits. That road has been retouched by both Idris and Wada, and used as a leverage to loot, as its quality was ever below par.
Most of the significant and very beautiful round-about drives were constructed under PAA.
He paid salaries with a timeliness that though not perfect, is far better than what’s obtainable this past 4 – 6 years, knowing the state was mainly a civil servant state. New cars and house constructions were the trend. Even my parents bought their first car, a Toyota Corolla in 2001, when PAA was in governance. He never owed a huge section of the civil servants, and when there were shortages in the treasury, it was usually a god-complex tussle between him and the presidency of the time. The debt he owed then was so blown out of proportion, but people would prefer that to what they’re owed today. Remember I said PAA isn’t perfect, neither can anyone point to a wholly perfect governor ever; there usually would be some things you’d rather not come up when discussing the said person’s records.
He began the plan and process of the Lokoja Specialist Hospital before Ibrahim Idris finished it and took credit for it.
The housing units/estates, quite a number of them were completed in his term or in completion when he was ousted; a foundation that led to today’s highbrow areas after Ganaja junction, places a stranger will wake up and be tempted to think he was in zones and areas of Abuja. These beautiful areas towards the east of town sprouted out of the estate developments PAA began in the early 2000s.
There you have me just focusing on Lokoja. Do his sworn-haters want me to go statewide?
Earlier this year on the national level, we (particularly the youths, the hungry, the broke, the suffering, the realists, entrepreneurs (like me who have toiled at ideas and visions for years and failed because the system worked against us), the northerners, middle-belters, and westerners, and pocketfuls from the southeast and south south) decided that enough was enough; four more years of the mess we called governance was intolerable, and posterity will judge us harshly. We overwhelmingly cried for a change at the presidency, and ah, not many of us got a voter’s card, but I trust that 15 million votes represented the legibility of our course. That choice, which I must emphasize was never partisan but primarily about an individual echoed throughout the world. It’s time for a reprise in Kogi.
I believe President Muhammadu Buhari and Prince Audu Abubakar have a lot in common, especially their drive by the plight of the people and the extent they were abused, humiliated, and victimized by the powerfully corrupt almost extinct unaccountable plunderers of the nation’s wealth. Both of them were betrayed out of office by friends and their own people at some point. But it didn’t stop them from seeking to humiliate themselves to be in a position of accountability again, after going through years of humbling processes from life, and bring their people good, milk, honey, sanity, wow, sanity.
Their humiliation, strong enough to have kept them away from seeking public position, was not enough to keep them away when they consider the suffering the masses would face were some corrupt party-over-state person to govern.
PAA was on the way to putting Kogi state in a place where a blueprint would be laid for the subsequent governments before he was kicked out, and some people swore that he would never govern Kogi again. That’s why he’s lost elections back to back, and this time like PMB he is running because he was pressurized by the voice of the people. Now, pay attention to my next point, for Nigeria’s future rests on it. He was removed because there were those who didn’t understand that no political party is above the state or the state of the state. The consequence of prioritizing the welfare of a political party or its interests over that of the citizens of the state is what we have been suffering in Kogi state for 12 years.
For the loud voices who have been influencing the public with statements like we shouldn’t encourage the recycling of leaders, go and ask your mothers how many times they forgave your fathers for their wrongs so that you can have a semblance of a normal home and upbringing. Go see how the love got sweeter and more beautiful after each fight. How does this make sense here? You learnt recycling in your father’s house o. Your mother just couldn’t stop having enough of your fathers. Kogi just can’t have enough of PAA, not that we don’t know his imperfections; we also know his LOVE and RECORDS and the CROSS he carried for being the modern day father of Kogi’s development and progress. They have said he was or is corrupt. They have said he looted Kogi as governor. They are circulating all sorts of news, and as much as there are no proofs, there is the need to admit that politicians are all alike in some ways. They take, they lobby, they campaign brutally, they either work or don’t, but then we know where they aren’t much alike: who REALLY cares and works for the people and development of the land, and those who just don’t care.
My appeal to my fellow Kogi people is that the next 4 years in governance should be given to Prince Audu Abubakar.
I am hopeful that our infrastructure, our commerce, our environment, our systems of life will be reset to that which would bring joy to us and our posterity.
Let’s all turn out in our thousands, with our families at the polling booths, without religious differences, without ethnic divisions, and the absence of intra-tribal rancour, and vote massively for PAA, PRINCE AUDU ABUBAKAR.
Thank you,
Josiah Ikupólati
(Recording Artist, #IAM4KOGI Convener)
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