Yahaya Bello: Thoughts On The White Lion

For any lover of animal documentaries, it is always heart-rending, to watch the circumstances under which old lions die.

As the king of the jungle ages, they get gripped by arthritis which slows their capacity to attack and even defend themselves. Stripped of this ability, male lions which in their younger years were often abrasive withdraw into a pitiful life of solitude.

As the arthritis worsens, they are unable to feed and resort to scavenging what other lions or animals may have left behind. It is no surprise that malnutrition sets in and with it they begin to emaciate. A lion whose roar once sent animals fleeing is now barely able to raise its voice. In many cases, unable to walk anymore, they just collapse and die off. In other cases, they are viciously attacked by hyenas who devour them.

The political odyssey of the immediate past governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello fits the outline of the lion. It is even more fascinating that he appeared to revel in the moniker, White Lion.

In the last eight years, there is no doubt that Bello straddled the polity with the surefootedness of an abrasive lion. Whereas lions stride around their territories with a calm confidence, often jumping upon their prey with surprise, the steps of Yahaya Bello around Kogi in the last eight years were anything but calm. The vivaciousness of his entourage inevitably created problems for him and his politics.

One of his early enablers, Senator Dino Melaye eventually got to discover that a governor requires 100% loyalty, no matter your role in bringing him to power. Despite his role in bringing Bello to power, Senator Melaye was forced to seek out his territory living on trees at least for some days while Yahaya Bello reigned.

In his second term as he settled to power it began to leak that some of the dissonances that trailed his first term were actions done in his name by his subordinates.

Whatever, there was an unusual and maybe eerie twist to Yahaya Bello’s politics in the eight years he was governor.  Both friends and foes have told this correspondent that Yahaya Bello as governor ran a democratic culture within his camp to the extent that he did not impose his personal choices as candidates of the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Multiple sources have confirmed to your correspondent that Bello allowed his inner circle of political enablers to decide on candidates for almost every constituency. Once the candidate was chosen, Yahaya Bello with ferocity and by hook or crook went about to enforce the decision on the rest of the polity.

There were, however, a handful of exceptions. The return of Senator Smart Adeyemi to the Senate in 2019, it  was gathered, was, however, based on Yahaya Bello’s personal appeal to his enforcers.

The emergence of Usman Ododo as his successor was also another choice that was Yahaya Bello’s personal choice. It was perhaps because of this history of ‘benevolent dictatorship’ that there was no serious dissonance within the camp after he decided on Ododo.

Having straddled the polity for eight years, is Bello about going the way of the old lion?

After some initial folly of roaring as a lion is wont to at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Bello  appears to have run out of steam. The roar it is claimed was his way of expressing his fundamental right to use the law to fend off his many political foes within and outside Kogi State.

Bello it appears had like some other governors obtained a court order against arrest or harassment over the allegations of having spent about N80 billion of Kogi State funds in February 2016 when he was just about a month in office. Was it the sloppiness of the EFCC that pushed him to seek that order or the insinuations of political betrayal by his associates that made him to be afraid of his shadow? As the case is now before the court it would be foolhardy to discuss the case.

However, Jesutega Onakpasa, a former chorister in the Bola Tinubu choir recently insinuated a fight within the APC for supremacy that has put the likes of Bello, Nasir El-Rufai among others to disarray.

So after roaring away at the EFCC over allegations of fraud allegedly perpetuated while he was in office from his den in the Kogi State Government House, Bello has now entered the captivity of the EFCC!

Where the narration with the old lion differs is that unlike the animals in the wild, Bello is not yet showing signs of political arthritis that will lead to him being devoured.

Even locked away from circulation, the foibles of the EFCC and his political traducers appear to be giving oxygen to the White Lion indicating that his political obituary may not yet have been set.

Yesterday, the commission which had earlier arraigned him on multiple charges of corruption again brought him to court without the knowledge of his lawyers, fanning the claim by some of his supporters of a witch-hunt.

That and the earlier errors of the commission in barging into the Kogi Government House in Abuja on the night the officials allowed him to walk away last September calls for introspection on the part of the commission.

But beyond Bello’s issues with the EFCC is the claim of selective prosecution by the anti-graft commission.

It is now claimed that whereas there are many other governors with petitions leveled against them that the EFCC has been blind to such, focusing on Bello perhaps because of politics. The wrong politics on the part of Yahaya Bello it is alleged, was not in supporting Bola Tinubu and marshalling the youth campaign, but allegedly in the claim that he sought to take the position of National Chairman from Dr Abdullahi Ganduje.

Whatever, the insinuations of political witch-hunt is no defence for the allegations of stealing from the state as Yahaya Bello is accused of doing whether in February 2016 or thereafter. After roaring and running out of steam including losing the case to invalidate the law establishing the EFCC, Bello has his day in court.

Unlike the old emaciated lion brought down by arthritis, Bello apparently has his bones still young and able to fight back. His ability will be seen in the days ahead. But like a vibrant lion, he should be handled with care less he consumes his handlers!

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