Yahaya Bello appears bold and rugged but like most men like him who embrace violence as a way life, he is a coward. Dogs bark because they are afraid. Yahaya is running away from justice.
Yahaya Adoza Bello was an unknown quantity before 1999. No one knew him, not even in his Kogi State until he emerged by a specially contrived political manoeuvre that gave him the governorship of that almost ruined state in place of the more qualified James Abiodun Faleke, running mate to Prince Abubakar Audu in a joint gubernatorial ticket the duo had clearly won. Prince Audu in a cruel twist of fate had died leaving the space for all kinds of manipulations by political hegemonists. Yahaya’s political career began with a loss to Abubakar Audu in the APC gubernatorial primary in 2015. Audu won the election, but he later died after the election; Bello was selected to replace him as party nominee, and was sworn in the following year. What should be logical and according to the nation’s law is for the deputy governor-elect to carry on as the governor-elect while a deputy is sought for him for their party, APC. But Nigeria’s evil system kicked in and Faleke was jettisoned and Yahaya Bello picked to be sworn in as the governor.
As it happened, Nigeria’s permanently dislocated judiciary confirmed the illegal and illogical move of the APC to railroad Yahaya Bello as governor. It was a matter of cash, a matter of raw America dollars for justice to go the way of any willing buyer in Nigeria. Any wonder that the same dollar that paved the way for Yahaya Bello to become governor is also now paving an inglorious way to rescue him from prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Yahaya Bello is reported by Sahara Reporters, an online newspaper, to have in a leaked WhatsApp chat converted huge sums of naira into the almighty dollar to bribe judges so that they will give him victory in his scheme to escape justice.
Yahaya Bello, 48, is one of the youngest persons to have been governor since the return to democracy in 1999. Born only in 1975, Yahaya Bello’s graduation from the Ahmadu Bello University was in 1999, which was the year the military after many years of draconian and corrupt intervention in Nigerian governance returned the nation to democracy. It was the year Olusegun Obasanjo, an ex-military ruler won an election to be president. As Obasanjo was being sworn in, Yahaya Bello was also assuming his one year mandatory NYSC service at the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC). He had armed himself with a degree in Accountancy from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Along the course of his duties in the Commission, Yahaya Bello became a chartered member of the ANAN, an accounting body that is fast becoming notorious for harbouring some very corrupt Nigerians in its ranks. ANAN is a reputed haven for accountants in the public sector who out of fear for the very strict ICAN, the body that controlled accounting practice in Nigeria for so long until those who could not meet its rigorous membership procedure ganged together to influence the military government to establish a rival body. A former Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris accused of having stolen billions from the federation account is said to be member of ANAN. He is still being prosecuted by the EFCC.
Perhaps Yahaya’s work at RMFAC, enabled him to know how rich a state government can be and how self-serving it can be for anybody to govern a state. After a while Yahaya Bello left for transport business and politics. Where he got his seed capital for his transport business is not known and how big he grew there is also not known. But it is certain that transport business in Nigeria is a veritable ground for learning thuggery. Maybe this can explain why violence was a common style of Yahaya Bello in his eight years of rulership in Kogi as governor. Yahaya Bello’s contest for the second tenure was so marred by violence that Kogi State became a killing field. Young women who sang for him during the campaign openly canvassed that guns which they said sounded “ta ta ta” were reigned on his opponents. Yahaya became a terror nobody could tame.
Being only 44 years when he became governor without really contesting the election, Yahaya was thought to be answer to the cry of the youths who had cried in the social media that Nigeria’s political system had become a haven for gerontocrats. But their hope was not to be because as Peter Obi, only 61 when he contested the presidency and far less, (45) when he became governor in Anambra state, said in 2023: “The youngest governor in the nation is the worse performing governor in the nation.” Obi did not mention names but he was no doubt referring to Yahaya. Yahaya fits perfectly the description of Obi. Yahaya Bello deployed his youthful vigor to serve himself and his family rather than Kogi State. Yahaya reportedly constituted a panel headed by a retired fine gentleman officer of the Nigeria Army to look into past misdeeds of some public officers in the state and recover monies looted. While he inaugurated that committee at Lokoja, capital of the state, Yahaya said the committee is a warning to current officers serving in the state that they can be called to account after their service. He said this included himself. Those who heard him say this including this essayist, thought well of Bello but his various schemes to dodge the call of the EFCC to account for billions of naira he was accused of having stolen from the state has put a lie to that statement, he couldn’t have meant it, it was a mere smokescreen. According to information, the gentleman officer of the Nigeria Army said to be recruited based on his known impeccable ethical standing did not stay for too long on the assignment. Having found that Yahaya was only hypocritical about the assignment, the officer later resigned. That was the end of any serious work to recover looted money. A very reliable source said one of the guilty pleasures of Yahaya is going abroad weekly to gamble.
Later Yahaya turned his attention to Dangote Cement Company, Obajana owned by billionaire industrialist, Aliko Dangote, and the biggest private contributor to Kogi State’s internally generated revenue. He didn’t go to court to get judgement against Dangote if he genuinely had any. That will not be fast enough and will not achieve his objective which is very private. He took well-armed thugs, not the police, and shut the factory. There were allegations that Yahaya only wanted to skim off some naira over each cement bag produced for himself. Was he not the chief executive of the state? Some money must therefore go into his private pocket. Dangote leveraged on his well-oiled connection at the seat of power in Abuja where the then Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo called Dangote and Yahaya to a meeting. The meeting resolved that both must go to court to settle their differences. The waters of Cameroon and those of Benue and Niger rivers soon conspired against Yahaya when they gushed in uncontrollably and flooded Kogi State. Back then Yahaya appealed to the public to give him money to help citizens involved in the flood disaster because “the state has no money.” But who stole the state’s money?
That is the question the EFFC, the nation’s anti-graft agency is calling Yahaya to answer because it has allegations that the former governor may have been conducting his gambling spree abroad with the state’s resources. Apart from this, EFCC, said it has documents that Yahaya’s light finger had been involved in bankrupting the state. The two-term governor of Kogi State according to documents in the EFCC’s possession, is alleged to have paid a whooping $800,000 from the state’s account as school fees of his children at the American International School in Abuja. Yahaya appears bold and rugged but like most men like him who embrace violence as a way life, he is a coward. Dogs bark because they are afraid. Yahaya is running away from justice. He had planned today as he bankrupted the state in his years as governor. When he was governor, he was well-covered by the obnoxious immunity clause which Nigerians will do well to jettison if they want to end corruption in the nation. Yahaya could not be arrested or tried as governor therefore he could steal, maim and kill. But he was aware of what has happened to other governors before him who were arrested almost from the inauguration of their successors by the anti-graft agency. Yahaya planned a third term for himself. Even if the law only permits two terms, he would beat the system. He looked for a stooge who will do his bidding and permit him to be governor for the third term. That stooge has to be thoroughly foolish and unpatriotic. He found one in his Auditor-General, Ahmed Usman Ododo, who is also young. He deployed all his arsenal of rigging and got victory for Ododo. Ododo came down as first in the history of speed of constituting government anywhere in the world when he read the list of his commissioners almost as he came off the dais of his inauguration, obviously given to him by his boss and lord, Yahaya Bello.
Ododo also told the suffering people of Kogi not to laugh yet because the tenure of their oppressor had not ended; Yahaya Bello is still the governor of the state. If whatever he says conflicts with whatever Yahaya Bello says, that of Yahaya Bello must be taken. And an office of the former governor was set up for Yahaya Bello right in the governor’s office. Thus when the EFCC laid ambush for Yahaya who will not answer its request to present himself at its office, it was Ododo with his security details who were summoned to Abuja in the home of Bello to engage the EFCC in a shootout, one government security outfit against another and ferret Yahaya away to safety. Since that incident, the whereabouts of Yahaya Bello has not been known neither has he answered the appeal of reasonable Nigerians to make himself available to the EFCC and prove his innocence. The former governor is suspected to be holedup at the Lugard House in Lokoja, the abode of the government hiding under the wings of a willing stooge, Ododo to continue an illegal third term in office, thus taking political brigandage to a new height in Nigeria.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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