Akpabana: Kogi’s best ‘brain’, whose time has come to ‘govern’

By Samson Atekojo Usman

Ahead of November 11, Kogi State governorship election, three personalities resonate out of the entire contestants in a rat race to the Lugard House in January, 2024. They are the Vice Admiral Jibrin Oyibe Usman, rtd (Accord Party); Alhaji Muritala Yakubu Ajaka (SDP) and Ododo Ahmed Usman (APC). Out of the three, General Usman is contesting governorship election for the second time, having contested in 2019 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress and was screened out during the primary.

The Screening Committee did not give any concrete reason. I recalled, something like the expression of interest form was not properly filled or dated or something…….. else. But I smelt something close to mischief, greed and selfishness, but as a force man with integrity, a technocrat and a quintessential personality with no comparison, he quietly retreated to his private life. While some of us who are pained with the calamity in Kogi State at the time and having not envisage any succour if the likes of Jibrin Oyibe Usman would not take over the mantle of leadership in the state, the citizens will continue to live in peril tried to convince on alternative party to no avail.

At that time, we assembled ourselves one morning and walked to the General’s office for a ‘tete-a-tete’ and suggested if he could defect to another party to drive home his governorship ambition. For the first time, the general smiled, and said: “No, It’s the burden to rescue Kogi people that drove me into the contest and having been screened out, I will go back and rest.” Here, the like minds left his office and we relax till when only God will intervene.

Undoubtedly, Kogi people missed opportunity to have a governor that would have been the best in the Admiral Usman. This is a man, so humble despite his background in a force and who has risen to the zenith of his career. A well-read officer with Legal Law Bachelor, LLB (Hons); a great thinker per excellence. Fondly called ‘Akpabana’, he is a detribalized leader who is properly fit for a heterogeneous society like Kogi State.

His understanding of the cosmogony of Kogi State is awesome and who will never take any tribe for granted, nor label any tribe as ‘antelopes’. The man, Jibrin Oyibe Usman is not given to vulgarism as in …”with N6,000, you can sleep with their wives..”.

Concerned about welfare of Kogi workers, including citizens at the grassroot. His international connection and contact would flow in investment into the State and was ready to reposition the State for greater productivity and to compete with other States.
As a maritime security expert, the governorship candidate when he was in active service, he was the nightmare of pirates and pipeline vandals. In bringing such cpacity to bear, Kogi State will be at advantage as criminals who currently enjoys government patronage in the guise of political advisers would have to excuse themselves from the State.

Kogi State under Yahaya Bello has been polarized along ethnic lines and this has given credence to ethnic agenda. Take it or leave it, there is ethnic agenda, such as Igala agenda, Ebira agenda and Okun agenda and one would agree with me that since the creation of Kogi State, no governor living or dead has ever been so irredentist like Bello. Interestingly, ‘Kogi Unity Agenda’ is the thinking of Admiral Jibrin Usman, who insisted that every Kogites must be carried along. He said if he is sworn into office in January 2024, he will treat everybody equally and has since made his stance known to his think-thank.

But, come to think of it that in Yahaya Bello, you see a governor who has become the managing director of a political party.

Governor comes from Kogi Central, Chairman of the ruling APC, Central, all strategic Commissioners and Special Advisers are concentrated in Okene in the Central for the past eight years. Again, his cousin, Ododo Ahmed Usman who was his ex-Auditor General and who was the architect of the ill-fated screening of workers and percentage salary also comes from Okene, in the Central. Not even among Ebira people from other Local Governments in the Central are considered fit to be anointed except his cousin. Really, the bar of ethnic politics has been raised!

All the ‘yesmen’ Local Government Chairmen have been in office for the past eight years doing the bidding of the governor with attendant toll on the grassroot people and so many reprehensible things too numerous to mention here.

Given the magnitude of damage done to the State by the current administration. There is the need for the electorate to wise up in the choice of who to vote among the contestants. In the light of that, questions will suffice, thus: Who are those responsible for the woes they are passing through? To what extent was their involvement and under which party platform and in what capacity did they serve in the past that has brought the state to where it is now? With the level of collateral damage done to the State, who among the contestants has capacity to redeem the State base on pedigree? Of course, the only candidate that has the capacity to revamp the state is Admiral Usman and this must be understood now.

However, the people must unite ahead of the November election and be determined to ensure that votes count and it is usually said in the bible, “the Egyptians you see today, you shall see them no more.”

Atekojo is a journalist and a public affairs analyst with interest in good governance.