The PDP as a drowning political party will have to do a decade long restructuring and rebranding to get the right attention of the good people of Kogi. Anyone with a half dead conscience, who as a matter of fact feeds fat from the decadence in Kogi knows that Wada is just a perfect way to describe a political failure which zilch leadership trait. Sometimes I wonder how long it will take to undo the hopelessness he has successfully paraded in the last four years.
My point exactly is not that the main opposition party in Kogi is saintly. Not at all! But the point is that I see no reason why anyone would go under the sun or rain on the 21st of November (depending on the weather Almighty Allah approves on that fateful day) to award a failed party a renewed mandate. Like Kogi, Nigeria as a nation will spend a couple of years to clean the PDP’s mess, so why reward a failure with another chance?
I find it extremely democratic that there are about twenty candidates from the All Progressives Congress eyeing the Lugard House. And I seriously hope that the primaries will be as democratic as it should be. Of all the about twenty aspirants so far who have officially picked up their nomination forms, I would easily pass a couple of them save for Audu Abubakar. For crying out loud, Audu Abubakar need not return as executive governor of Kogi State. The question is what is he returning for exactly?
What Kogi needs now is the way forward and not anyone with several reasons other than rebuilding Kogi. Audu Abubakar in every sense only represents a blast from the past the people of Kogi are not interested in. If we are clamoring for change in the connotative and denotative sense of it, then Audu Abubakar is obviously not the face of change. There is no time for endless power tussles or revenge; there is no time to be hopelessly passionate about the senatorial district or ethnic group a candidate hails from. All that is not going to get Kogi liberated from the shackles of regression, poverty and high crime rate that befalls and envelops the entire state at the moment. The main concern should be; which candidate can be trusted, which of them is credible; if he/she has handled public position before and is found worthy; that’s the direction we should be interested in.
Anyone who has been following the career of Air Vice Marshal Saliu Atawodi closely would find it easy to identify and pick him out from the pool of other twenty aspirants running for Kogi gubernatorial election under the All Progressives Congress (APC).
It will always remain difficult to see how a state like Kogi with high crime rate would be able to build structures that would aid trade and foreign investors. Which foreign investor wants to die? Which local investor wants to put money, time and resources where hoodlums will wake up one day and destroy huge investments? Kogi is too fragile for market or business success. And we are in an era where only states who are business minded in policies and governance approach will thrive. It isno more news that the oil money is dwindling. It is like a countdown as a matter of fact.
I am quite confident that a competent ex-security chief will be able to peddle down on the activities of criminals in the state. It is important to quickly remind the progressive minds in Kogi that the main reason why the litany of Memorandum of Understanding, MoU Captain idris Wada signed with international investors has yielded nothing is because of the security challenges in the state. Not to mention mismanagement.
It is also quite fascinating to note that AVM Saliu Atawodi after his retirement from the military seven years ago has successfully been able to grow a thriving IT and Security company – Touchstone Nigeria Limited. There is something about successful people, it lies in their ability to always replicate success wherever they find themselves. Kogi deserves the best not a blast from the Stone Age.
Muniru Abdullahi wrote in from Lokoja, Kogi State
