By Jibrin Okutepa, SAN
For those who are familiar with Nigerian flawed electoral processes, if there was any individual who had benefited immensely from these flawed and unjust systems Nigeria operate, it is Alhaji Yahaya Bello, the former installed governor of Kogi State.
In 2015 or so late, Prince Abubakar Audu ran for the office of the Governor of Kogi State. His running mate then was Hon Abiodun Faleke. Their political party was APC. They canvassed for votes in every nook and crannies of Kogi State. They were voted for overwhelmingly by the people of Kogi State. They had defeated Capt Idris Ichalla Wada, then PDP candidate.
The electoral umpire INEC was yet to declare the results when the usual happened. But the results were known by the people, and by constitutional arrangements, the winners were already known by the people who voted and had the results. But the people who voted had no power to make declarations. Only INEC can.
So, by law and practice, the ritual of declaration was yet to be done by INEC when the unusual happened. Prince Abubakar Audu had died before the rituals of declaration of the results by INEC. Hon Faleke, by natural dinct of thing, ought to have succeeded his late principal. But the political actors will have none of this.
So, the political actors who did not want a labourer to get his wages came up with very disingenuous political arrangements. They decided to field Yahaya Bello to reap and inherit the votes of Audu and Faleke. And so Yahaya Bello became governor of Kogi State without the votes or the sovereignty of the people directly given to him.
He became governor by inheritance of votes. In the cause of governance, he so became law unto himself in Kogi. Thuggery and thuggish approaches to governance became legalised and legitimized. People were fed up with adolescent governance in the state. The people did not enjoy the governance in Kogi State.
But before then, Hon Faleke challenged the process that put up Yahaya Bello as replacement of late Prince Abubakar Audu. He was told that the processes that threw Yahaya Bello were lawful and that INEC was right to declare the elections inconclusive.
The result of that decision and the subsequent one in 2019 that legitimized the democratic tatatalism of the Kogi brand of democracy emboldened Yahaya Bello as the white lion of Nigerian politics. Yahaya Bello was a thong in the flesh of all. He reigned as he liked. He was an emperor.
Today, Yahaya Bello has become law unto himself. He has no respect for law and order. He has refused to appear before a competent court of law to answer charges against him.The refusal of Yahaya Bello to honour our courts is a function of our propensity to tolerate the most intolerable misconduct.
If the processes that produced Yahaya Bello were not followed and the legitimate things were done in accordance with due process, Yahaya Bello would not have contemplated committing the alleged economic crimes for which he is taunting our judiciary with applications to stall his trials.
Nigerians must decide to do things right.There is no way we can grow and develop as a nation when we deliberately choose to do the wrong things and instal people in power just for selfish and primordial parochial interests.
We have now seen that Yahaya Bello is larger than the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That is why he can not be arrested by the federal might. But, the federal might can be deployed to deal with those who are seeking good governance and accountability. That is the absurdities of Nigeria state. But how long can we live with these absurdities. Only God knows.
