Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State means many things to many people. He is young, fearless, ambitious and temptingly innovative.
To me, his politics is complicatedly beautiful and leaves you guessing his next move and, like the wind, you won’t know where it began and possibly will end.
Is Bello then a mystery? No doubt, he has shown capacity to keep Kogi State out of the map of sociopolitical and economically unstable Nigerian narrative, his iron-like security cover for the Confluence State remains unprecedented.
Lately, like the lion king, Governor Bello has changed his style of public engagement, and seems to pick his battles, focus on attracting investments and showing open gregarious desire to welcome visitors to Kogi.
Recently, he pounced and deliberately chanced on grabbing Nigeria’s biggest cultural tourism icon and enigma, Otunba Segun Runsewe, director-general, National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC), to the frontiers of Kogi tourism rebirth.
Like everything associated with the NCAC DG, the news of a Runsewe-led tourism challenge in Kogi State went viral and threw the Nigerian and intra-African tourism community into excitement.
Kogi tourism could be likened to the colt tied down by the owner of which Jesus Christ told his disciples to go get it for him as a motorcade. In this case, Runsewe is the famed cultural tourism disciple, and the colt that needs to be set free is the avant garde abandoned but rich cultural tourism endowments of Kogi nation.
Governor Bello, with eyes to the future, must have been convinced that getting Runsewe to be at the behest of redefining and articulating the Kogi tourism future would open new economic doors and power rural development, and poverty addressed.
Let us pause here and do an audit of the gains of Kogi State in the Nigerian tourism map. Kogi remains a mini Nigeria in truth and reality. Geographically, an entity, home to the Igala, Yoruba, Ebira, Nupe, and Igbo, Kogi is the flag and melting pot of British colonial history and Christian religious revolution. The footprints are obvious and can’t be ignored.
The first primary school in Nigeria, the Lord Lugard sanctuary on Mount Patti, a table mountain, which unveils the beauty and scenic concupiscence of Lokoja, the state capital. Down the famous River Niger, the confluence mystery of the Rivers Niger and Benue finds a geotourism engagement in Kogi State. Indeed, the British race to partition the humongous Borgu nation in 1895 was made possible through the waters of River Niger, no doubt Frederick Lugard, after the successful military expedition to Nikki, returned and made home in Lokoja, the colonial administrative headquarters of the Royal Niger Company and later Northern Protectorate.
The cemeteries of colonial soldiers and administrators abound here, and the religious footages and influence of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther certainly began here. The ecological marine and flora ecosystem of the state are huge and untapped.
Certainly, the cultural sights and sounds of the Kogi nation are worth the time and efforts of the Runsewe-led Kogi tourism advisory committee and Governor Bello can’t be far from his target mission.
My worries, however, lie in possible unseen hands of administrative and protocol delays at Lugard House, Lokojo, the seat of government, which may pour cold water on the excitement and expectations of getting the Kogi tourism colt out of the prison of years of official neglect and abandonment.
There’s no denying the fact that Otunba Runsewe is a game-changer in whatever he lays his Midas hands to do for the nation and people of Nigeria, and, of fact, this Kogi assignment is as important as getting Nigeria’s historical tourism perception retold.
And with an eight-point tourism agenda unfolded and presented to Governor Bello last week by Runsewe, the ball and goalpost have shifted to the frontage of Governor Bello.
Again, we ask, will Governor Bello roar like a lion king and set free Kogi’s cultural tourism? Time is ticking and we watch and pray.