OPINION: Flight of a fugitive white lion

IMMEDIATE past governor of Kogi state, Alhaji Yahaya AdozaBello, is on the run. And in hiding. He was governor between 2016 and 2024. He was not originally a candidate in the election that subsequently produced him as a governor. His party man who was coasting to victory in that election,Abubakar Audu,suddenly took ill and died on the eve of the announcement of the result of the supplementary election. Indeed, in November 2015 some supporters were already celebrating Audu’s election victory in his home when an associate of his came in and stopped the drumming and dancing ahead of the formal proclamation of his win. In my Igbo nation of Nigeria we call such a person as Bello ‘nwachinemere’ or nwachinemelu’ depending on the dialect. The sage Chinua Achebe called them those whose palm kernels were cracked for themby a benevolent spirit.

Bello was barely 40 years-old when he assumed office as governor in Lokoja, the capital of the confluence state. He was not the choice of the people until fortune smiled on him. He probably did not expect that he would be governor at that material time and may not have been psychologically primed for the office. In the US in 2016, the presidency happened on Donald J. Trump and he, in turn, happened on America. Seven months to the next presidential election n the US, Trump still remains a nightmare to some Americans. And indeed the world especially for countries in the northern hemisphere. But this will be a story for yet another day.

To be sure, Alhaji Bello was not the only person to access elective political office through means that had not been entirely pure, reasonable and logical. To illustrate how befuddlng the process of his accession to power was, the national assembly [NASS] was compelled soon after to amend the Electoral Act. Before Alhaji Belo was now Barrister Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi who became governor of Rivers state in 2007 even as he was not on the ballot. Not At All. Celestine Omehia won that election on the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] but was sacked by the Supreme Court which also ruled that that opinion awarding victory to Amaechi should never be cited as a judicial precedent. After Bello came Bayelsa state where Duoye Diri of the PDP became governor in 2019 because the running mate of the All Progressives Congress [APC] winner David Lyon was removed by a Tribunal because of forged certificates by Degi-Eremionye. Zamfara and Plateau states had similar experiences of one sowing while another reaped.

Of all the other aberrations in accession to power,that of Yahaya Bello has been particularly interesting in its absurdity. The irony is that Bello was supposed to be a Poster-Boy of the youth in high political office. He had the weight of history on his shoulders. And how spectacularly he failed leading to a situation where he was last week declared as a Wanted Person by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC]. For weeks since he left office in January and lost his immunity from arrest and prosecution, he had been evading the EFCC which accused him of misappropriating over N80bn of the money of indigenes of Kogi state.

Last week, the EFCC acting on intelligence aid siege to his Abuja Mansion and appeared to have finally cornered him. But the anti-graft agency did not reckon with impunity clothed as immunity. Bello’s relation Usman Ododo whom he installed as his successor appeared from nowhere, drove into Bello’s compound and allegedly smuggled himout of the premises. Ododo stretched his immunity to cover his predecesor who had lost his.

The current Kogi state governor may not know it but his crime has started counting which should include abuse of office and obstruction of justice. For now he will think and believe that four years or eight years translate to eternity. Bello did not learn from history and Ododo s walking the same path. The two take immunity for impunity. Bello probably never imagined that the day of reckoning will arrive this early.

Bello as a governor behaved more like an emperor and a terrorist. Everything he touched in Kogi state in his eight years of obvious misrule turned into dirt and death. Yes, death. Those who survived Yahaya Adoza Bello’s terrorism had bitter tales to narrate. One of such person is Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. As a PDP senatorial candidate, she woke up one morning to notice that all the access roads to her district and even within had been dug up and the cold tar wherever available had been scraped. The plot was to stop her from canvassing for votes and subsequently deny her supporters access to polling units on election day.Of course, many assassination attempts had been made on her ife. She survived and then went onto win in a state where Bello and his APC killer squad thought that they were invincible.

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But one of the state’s Chief Judges was not that fortunate. On November 14, 2018, at the direction of Bello, the secretary to the state government wrote to Chief Judge Nasir Ajanah, ordering him to provide “the pay roll of judicial staff for the ongoing pay parade of civil servants in the state”. At the time of this decree, the governor was a defendant in a suit before the Chef Judge. So the Chief Registrar replied to the letter telling the governor that the judiciary was a self-accounting and co-equal branch of government supervised by the State Judicial Service Commission.

Imperious Bello would have none of it. He wrote directly to the then Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen who was also chair of the National Judicial Council [NJC], asking the Council to find the Chief Judge guilty of misconduct.Without trial. Bello also required from the NJC that the Chief Judge stepped “aside [so that an] Acting Chief Judge [be] allowed to take his place”.

Even at that the former governor could not wait for the NJC. He referred the ‘effrontery’ of Ajanah to the State House of Assembly, which set up a ‘probe panel to investigate the Chief Judge. Ajanah sued but while his suit was pending the Assembly on April 2, 2019 passed a resolution directing Bello to remove the Chief Judge and recommended discliplinary action against the Chief Registrar. On June 18, 2019, another judge Alaba Ajileye of the Kotonkarfe High Court also in Kogi state ruled against the House of Assembly and the governor, saying they acted unlawfully.

But there would still be no respite for Ajanah and Ajileye. Ajanah was banished from all state functions including those of the judiciary where he was supposed to preside. It was so bad that law scholar and historian, Prof. Chdi Odinkalu, last weekend recalled that “when Chief Judge Ajanah attended the swearing-in of the new Grand Khadi of Kogi state on May 21, 2020, the Chief Security Officer [CSO] to Yahaya Bello informed him that the governor gave a directive that he [CJ] should not be allowed to attendthe function”. Ajanah was eventually hounded into exile in Abuja where he reportedly contracted Covid-19. He died unsung.

Judge Ajileye escaped with his life but not without trauma and deprivation. Governor Bello made it known that he would not guarantee his life and safety in Kogi. He refused to recommend him for promotion to the Federal Court of Appeal when the opportunity came. Ajileye said to be an authority on digital law retired from the Bench last year. He may have been unfulfilled but the loss is Nigeria’s because of one man-Yahaya Adoza Bello.

Former Governor Bello can run but he cannot hide. Its possible that by the time you are reading this the long arm of the law would have caught up with him. The same man who bastardized the judiciary in Kogi is now seeking refuge in the law courts by procuring Oluwole injunctions. What an irony!

Bello nicknamed himself the ‘white lion. Lion is the king of the jungle. It does not run from foes.

It does not hide whether it be white or tawny lion.

As a youth Bello was fake. As a governor he came very short. As a representative of young people in government, he was an unmitigated disaster. Bello is a by word for incompetence, rudeness, sleaze, fickleness, abuse of critical state institutions, intolerance, violence, bloodletting and every other unthinkable evil.

All said, the EFCC cannot be trusted. The same anti-graft agency that wasted no time in storming former Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha’s Abuja home through the roof to arrest him was dilly dallying in the case of Bello n the same Abuja. It looked more like a collusion to allow Bello to flee. History is replete with stories of the EFCC conniving with politically exposed persons to blunt justice. Bello should step forward like a man, assuming he is one,to clear his name in court.

Meanwhile, there was something curious about the federal government advice to the fugitive Bello to the effect of finding himself a good lawyer before surrendering to the EFCC. Coud this be read to mean that with a good lawyer, the case against him would be dead on arrival?

AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA

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Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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