It’s just four months into the year 2024; Father’s Day is barely two months away, but we already have a nominee for the father of the year award. His name is Yahaya Bello.
Yahaya Bello, the immediate past governor of Kogi State, has ‘raised’ the bar (if there are standards) when it comes to what it takes to be a good, kind-hearted, and loving father.
We wouldn’t have known this side of Bello if not for Ola Olukoyede, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, who, in a press conference on Tuesday, disclosed to the world how the former governor of the confluence state moved $720,000 (over N900 million going by the current exchange rate) belonging to the good people of Kogi to pay his child’s school fees. He must have been so broke that the Treasury of Kogi remained his last resort.
The question that comes to mind in the middle of this mess is: at what cost or expense has Yahaya Bello showered this unfailing love on his child?
The payments, according to the documents released by the school, show our father of the year nominee has paid in advance for 10 sessions dating up to the 2034–2025 session.
How can a man play God in the affairs of his own fellow man? What is Yahaya Bello’s intention, if I may ask? Going by our beliefs about the two main religions in this country, what gives Bello the assurance that there will be 2035? How is he sure whether he or the child will see the next 10 minutes? At what cost or at whose expense is Bello’s love for his own child?
The last time we were told, the population of out-of-school children in Kogi State, according to the 2018 Digest of Basic Education Statistics, was around 125,000.
Apart from building three questionable model schools in the state, what can be said of Yahaya Bello’s investment in education throughout his eight-year stay in office as Kogi State governor?
Hardly do we hear any positive news coming out of Kogi’s educational sector about Yahaya Bello’s stay as governor other than reports of the state owing teachers and civil servants salaries of more than two years.
In fact, there was a time when the Kogi State government was accused of diverting close to N50 billion in budget support bailout funds released to it by the Buhari administration. This fund, according to the terms of its release, was to offset overhead obligations the state owes its workforce.
Media trial or not, this revelation is staggering. The school confirming the payment is disheartening. Yahaya Bello is just one of 36 state governors, and his likes are a major fraction of our political class.
Mortgaging the future of 125,000 children to secure the future of your own child is nothing but wickedness. Yahaya Bello’s act has basically shown us that a major fraction of our political class are murderers—not murderers of their fellow man but murderers of their own conscience.
If Yahaya Bello has nothing to hide, why is he evading arrest? He should come out and tell the world what really transpired with verifiable evidence. Kogi State has never been in the news for anything good.
For a state that borders nine other states, Kogi should be a beehive of economic activity, if not the economic hub of the North Central geopolitical zone. Has Yahaya Bello taken advantage of this strategic position in his state? The answer remains no.
Yahaya Bello’s political journey in Kogi has shown us all that getting governance right is not a question of how old we are or the strength we have to expend on making things right. It becomes more saddening that the youngest elected governor in our recent history happens to be one of the worst we have ever produced.
