We wish to begin by drawing Your Excellency’s attention to the contemporary reality of minimum governance in Kogi State today. Whereas Rivers State, where you declared a state of emergency 18 March 2025 to stem possible sociopolitical inflammation with potentially dire socioeconomic consequences, was in contest between two political leaders, the situation in Kogi State is more scary. True, Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo is the face of governance in Kogi State. It is common knowledge, however, that very much like his colleague, Siminalayi Fubara in Rivers State, Ododo was wholly and totally installed by his immediate predecessor and consanguineal relative, Yahaya Bello. Very early in the life of his administration, Ododo announced to his constituents in Kogi Central that Bello’s word takes precedence over his on any and every issue.
Your Excellency might have also seen a recent video clip where newly “elected” members of the Kogi State House of Assembly paid homage to Yahaya Bello in his Abuja home and were expressly told by Bello that they’ve merely been invited to “come and chop,” and are total “yes men” under his watch. That is the level of totalitarianism enthroned in Kogi politics since the tragic advent of Yahaya Bello in 2016, the quantum vice grip he exercises on governance in the state. For the records, all the bills passed by the Kogi State House of Assembly since 2016, have been generated from Government House, Lokoja. Mr. President may wish to deploy official and intelligence resources at his disposal to double-check on this. This is not the kind of democracy you fought for from deathly trenches under military fascism when General Sani Abacha held Nigeria at its jugular.
A dangerously uncanny dimension to the political harakiri in Kogi State is the recent emergence of a new extension to the Kogi State power dysfunction. Habibat Oyiza Tijani Onumoko, Accountant-General of the state, has become a veritable political “third force”, consummating the gubernatorial tripod of Ahmed Ododo; Yahaya Bello and Habitat Onumoko. All three of them are blood relatives from Ebiraland in Kogi State. Until the twilight of the Yahaya Bello term in office, Onumoko was a Grade Level 12 officer in Okene Local Government Council. Against extant civil service rules and conventions, she was accelerated through the rungs of Director, Acting Permanent Secretary and substantive Permanent Secretary, and then deployed to the Local Government Service Commission. Weeks after Ododo’s inauguration in 2024, Onumoko was appointed Accountant-General of Kogi State!
Onumoko has been so emboldened in the Kogi State power structure that, while Bello and Ododo are almost permanently resident in Abuja, the federal capital city, Onumoko is “Governor in-situ” who stays in Lokoja and manages the home front. Commissioners, Advisers, Council Chairmen, and legislators defer to the all-powerful Onumoko, who goes by sundry nicknames and aliases. These include *Mama Alert”, “Mama Cash” (both in tacit reference to her position as official exchequer of government), and elsewhere as “Capacity Mama”, to underscore her omnibus powers in statecraft. Like we earlier noted, Mr. President, Kogi State effectively operates an illegal and ubiquitously novel governorship tripod. While there are suggestions to the effect that her appointment to the Accountant-General position is to help consolidate the proxy hold of Yahaya Bello on the public vault in Kogi State, Onumoko’s recent full blown excursion into on-field partisan politics is the more troubling.
Onumoko has been on a roadshow, visiting Local Government Areas, local government chiefs, traditional rulers, heads of security and intelligence agencies, schoolchildren and common folk, lining the streets in sun and rain to receive her. In recent weeks, she has toured Olamaboro, Dekina, Bassa, Mopamuro, among others. In a widely publicised statement, the Kogi Indigenous Progressive Union (KIPU), slammed what they described as her “reckless, wasteful and preemptive campaign tours”. KIPU described the exercise as ‘needless, extravagant and of no visible benefit to the people’. The statement alluded to the indefensible coercion of the people into singing praises of the establishment, and carpeted Onumoko for overstepping her professional and official schedule. KIPU referred to the ongoing aberration as a ‘gross violation of the Electoral Act, constitutional provisions and global electioneering protocols’.
MEKSTA notes that, while Kogi State is experiencing this unimaginable charade in the hands of state actors, governance and security have been left to the mongrels. Infrastructural development remains largely tokenist, cost of living unbearably high. It is on record that beginning from the administration of Yahaya Bello in January 2016, no single housing estate has been conceptualised or developed in Kogi State. As Governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007, Mr. President expanded and improved upon the mass housing and aggressive infrastructural traditions initiated by your predecessors, a template serially advanced by your successors. Absentee governance and leadership has unwittingly exposed the innocent and hapless people of Kogi State, to the murderous, bloodletting mercies of mindless bandits and miscreants who have made Kogi State their killing field in recent days and weeks. Within the space of one week, nearly a dozen policemen and vigilantes were mowed down by ruthless criminals in Kogi West alone for instance, leaving behind a trail of communal trepidation, pervading sorrow, tears unceasing and blood on the land. Kogi State is in the throes of total security breakdown with humongous collateral consequences for the country if urgent and decisive action is not taken, Mr President.
MEKSTA recalls that Mr. President’s efforts in ensuring the availability of more resources at the level of the subnationals is being rubbished and ridiculed in Kogi State. Whereas monthly allocations to local government areas in the state in recent months have averaged between N450 million and N600 million, depending on the council area, Chairmen are reportedly ingratiated with stipends of N4 million each per month, on the standing instructions of Government House, Lokoja. Mr President, you famously fought for the devolvement of development to every part of Lagos State in your time and courageously established 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) to take development to the depths grassroots. If developmental indices in Lagos State today ensure that the state nestles in the bracket of certain African countries, it is partly due to your visionary efforts two decades ago, despite strident opposition from the centre. You will weep today, Mr. President, if you see the wholesale disenfranchisement of leadership at the third tier of governance and the orchestrated impoverishment of the mass of the people.
Your Excellency, Mr. President, the depth of official insensitivity, the width of financial recklessness, the span of state-enabled lawlessness, the profundity of the crass impunity prevalent in Kogi State today is dangerously unacceptable and unbearable. The people have been the butt of the specie of sustained repression which has foisted a regime of ominous silence on the state. The potential volcanic portents of a spontaneous eruption will reverberate beyond the boundaries of the state. A surface wound is best managed before it degenerates into a festering sore, which could become gangreneous and require painful, disfiguring amputation. MEKSTA confirms we have reached this unfortunate crossroads in Kogi State. A desperate situation requires a desperate antidote. The Jagaban that you are, Mr President, you have never been shy to take tough decisions, tough measures. Kogi State is ripe for the declaration of emergency rule to stave up imminent holocaust, that the state may use the hiatus for reflection and recalibration.
On behalf of the teeming, deeply concerned, well-meaning people of Kogi State, MEKSTA eagerly anticipates Mr President’s early call to rescue our beloved state, please.
Signed
1. Hon Obafemi Medaiyese (Yagba Federal Constituency constituency)
2. Comrade Joseph Mebatonije (Kabba-Bunu/Ijumu Federal Constituency)
3. Alhaji Yusuf Kpareke (Lokoja/Kotonkarfe Federal Constituency)
4. Mallam Jimoh Ozovehe (Adavi/Okehi Federal Constituency)
5. Dr Nurudeen Adaviriku (Okene/Ogori-Magongo)
6. Alhaji Isiaka Momoh (Ajaokuta Federal Constituency)
7. Chief Ojonimi Adegbe (Idah/Igalamela-Odolu/Ofu/Ibaji Federal Constituency)
8. Pastor Mark Onucheyo (Dekina/Bassa Federal Constituency)
9. Bishop Husseini Saidu (Ankpa/Omala/Olamaboro Federal Constituency).
