For a man who has come to gain notoriety as the ‘’enfant terrible’’ of Nigerian politics, Bello’s emergence as the Sun governor of the year for unity and security comes across as an unlikely good news from an unusual quarter. At 46, Yahaya Bello, Nigeria’s youngest governor and current chief executive officer of Kogi State, north central Nigeria is indeed an unusual political figure even in the very unusual political terrain of Africa’s largest democracy. An outsider to the political establishment of both Nigeria and his native Kogi, his transformation from Alhaji Yahaya Bello (AYB), a political upstart to Governor Yahya Bello (GYB) was an unusual and rare phenomenon in the history of Nigeria. After many years of supporting his friends and associates into elective positions across party lines since 2003, Yahaya Bello will eventually emerge from the shadows and make an open bid for the governorship seat of Kogi State in 2015 at the age of 40 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). And he was to contend for the APC flag in the November (off season) 2015 gubernatorial election with no less a personality than Prince Abubakar Audu, the first and second elected governor of Kogi state.
Dismissed and in some cases despised as an unserious political neophyte, who was too ambitious for his age by the more established politicians in the state, Yahaya Bello was not considered a threat to the almighty Prince Abubakar Audu whose acolytes were well positioned in the rank and file of the state’s APC structure. Concerned about what I considered a mission impossible that the young man was about to embark on, I reached out to a mutual friend of ours and sought to know the viability of his friend’s ambition and he said to me, ‘’If Yahaya wants something he gets it. Despite the odds against him, he is going to make a very powerful showing at the primaries’’. And he added, ‘’I know my friend very well’’. That mutual friend of ours was Abdullahi Bello, the current Kogi State chairman of APC. True to his prediction, Yayha Bello will emerge the first runner up to Prince Abubakar Audu in a tightly contested primary to the surprise of many people. And when Prince Audu answered the divine call in the middle of an election he was winning against Captain Idris Wada, the incumbent PDP governor of the state, Yayha Bello, his main challenger was presented as a replacement to finish the race.
Without much experience but in a hurry to succeed where his predecessors failed, the beginning of GYB’s administration will be characterised by staggering, wobbling and stumbling but without falling despite all the initial challenges. However, out of the commotion that dogged the early stages of his administration, a rare and unusual leadership quality of the young Yahaya Bello began to crystalize. And this quality was his ability to unite one of Nigeria’s most ethnic and religiously plural states through a most inclusive administrative machinery that did not elevate his own section of the state above others hence leaving them marginalized and thus setting the stage for a Kogi state where, unity, justice and peace will reign for the next five years of his administration.
The unity and peace of any geographic entity is a fundamental condition precedent for its stability, security and socio-economic development. And to achieve this fundamental condition, the political leadership of the state must rise up above primordial sentiments of race, ethnicity and religion in the administration of their peoples. From his appointments to his modest efforts at infrastructural development, Governor Bello appears to be guided by this philosophy as seen in equitable distribution of positions, social amenities and political patronage across the state. Upon assumption of office as the governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, an Ethnic Ebira Muslim from the central senatorial district, will appoint Edward Onoja, Igala and Christian from the eastern senatorial district and Kingsley Fanwo, a Christian Okun man from the western senatorial district as Chief of Staff and Chief Press Secretary respectively. In fact, Yahaya Bello broke with an established tradition of his predecessors by being the first governor in the history of the state to appoint a chief of staff outside his ethnic group and senatorial district.
When Yahaya Bello became the governor in January 2016, Kogi State was a hot bed for kidnappers, armed robbers and bandits. Kogi state was also the second most important Boko Haram outpost after the Borno state with an active terror cell that served as a source of recruitments and logistics supply for the group’s war effort against the Nigerian state. Incidentally, the hub of both the kidnappers and armed robbers and the Boko Haram terror network in the state was domiciled in Governor Bello’s senatorial district with concentration in his native Okene local government with membership drawn from his Ebira kinsmen. With the strategic location of the state at the centre of Nigeria, which shares boundary with about ten state cutting across the south west, south east and south south geo-political zones as well as the FCT, Kogi was a time bomb waiting to explode at the heart of the nation. But fortunately for the people of Kogi State and Nigeria, Yahya Bello was able to rise above primordial interest of ethnicity and religion by placing national interest above sectional interest when he took to war on terror to his native land and his deviant kinsmen and severely neutralized their lethal capabilities. By making example of criminal elements among his own people through a security operation with surgical precision, the rest of the state now confident of an impartial enforcement of law and other by the chief security officer of Kogi State gave their full cooperation to his war on insecurity.
To further strengthen the unity in the state and ensure security of lives and properties, Yahaya Bello deployed a combination of a deliberately inclusive political process and a purposefully accommodating administrative procedure to abrogate the indigene/settler dichotomy by extending unlimited economic and political rights to all non-indigenous ethnic groups that resident in Kogi. The administration of Yahaya Bello went as far as creating chiefdoms for resident ethnic groups in the state and included them in their respective local government traditional rulers’ councils as recognized members. With a number of Igbo, Kanuri, Yoruba and Fulani appointees in the government of Yahaya Bello’s Kogi, the state has become a miniature Nigeria of some sorts where ethnicity or religion is no longer a barrier to economic and political progress of any individual. The abrogation of the indigene/settler dichotomy in Kogi State within a span of four years, has drastically reduced incidences of communal crisis in the state particularly between migrant Fulani herders and their host farmer communities as the former has been allocated lands across the state away from farmlands and are now bonafide ‘’Kogites’’ with their Ardos recognized as native chiefs. A major positive outcome of this indigenization of the Fulani herder community in the state is that they are now collaborating with their state government to combat Fulani banditry on Kogi highways by providing useful information about the criminal activities of some of their deviant kinsmen.
Governor Bello’s excellent diversity management is primarily responsible for his phenomenal successes at tackling insecurity in his state because with his people united behind him, all hands are on deck to contain their common enemy of violent armed groups. As though harkening to Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio wise counsel that, ‘’the easiest way to destroy a nation is to elevate one tribe over another’’, Yahaya Bello may not have paved all the roads in his state with gold, build towers of ivory and dot the skylines with scrappers, but he has built a united, Kogi where equity, justice and peace reigns. Sadly, this exemplary leadership qualities of Governor Yahaya Bello is rare in today’s Nigeria at all levels and tiers of government and that is precisely why Nigeria is falling apart under a complex web of insecurity arising from the disunity of the Nigerian people as a result of a poor diversity management skill of the current set of political leaders. The award bestowed on governor Yahaya Bello as the governor of the year on unity and security by The Sun newspapers is a pointer to the fact that without unity there cannot be security.