By Muhammad Ohunene Simbiyat

JUST three months after the third anniversary of the gruesome murder, the sacrifice, the burning alive of Salome Abu in Ochadamu, her ancestral home, in Kogi State, on the altar of politics to lubricate the undeserved victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the November, 2019 Kogi governorship election, Kogi East Senatorial District  has emerged with a blood-soaked prize as the thuggery headquarters of Nigeria’s politics.

The late Salome was the women leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a very vibrant political leader, whose crime was that she campaigned vigorously for the PDP and frustrated efforts by the APC thugs, recruited from the ranks of the state government’s ‘produce boys’, to falsify election results for their masters in Lokoja and Abuja.

In spite of  loud and nationwide outcry over her murder, as symbolic of the sham election that took place in 2019, and in spite of the multiple reports by election observers that the governorship election was anything but democratic, and that it should be cancelled, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) allowed it to stand.

On its part, the Nigeria Police Force failed the people for rejecting calls for the security agency to thoroughly investigate the woman’s murder.  In the end the jaundiced justice system in Kogi state set free most of the young men fingered for the crime, such that only one person was sentenced to a laughable prison term. Shamefully, institutions of state failed to penalise those who brazenly committed murder and arson.

No doubt, the fact that Salome’s murder was treated with levity, the authorities’ failure has emboldened political thugs to repeat their demonic act in the 2023 elections. Video, audio, and visual images that flooded the world wide web from Kogi East during last Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly polls, depicted a lawless enclave ruled by  armed thugs who were propped up by evil politicians bent on raping the people of their will to decide who should represent them for another four years.

Democracy is popularly defined as government of the people by the people and for the people. But in Kogi State, democracy has been redefined as government of thugs, by thugs and for the benefit criminal political elite.

It is very unfortunate that the democratic experience in the North-Central state in contemporary Nigeria has been dented by undue recruitment of thugs by competing and desperate politicians who use violence against their rivals.

Instead of selling ideas that address the needs of the people, and to prove how superior their plans were compared to those of their competitors, politicians find an easy, low-hanging resort to the use of force through thugs, to snatch from the people the political power to decide who should occupy leadership positions for their benefit.

In the process, criminal elements rose to become local government chairmen or administrators, special advisers to governors, members of Kogi State House of Assembly.

Worse still, it has become a common practice in Kogi East for traditional rulers to honour political thugs with undeserved traditional titles in return for blood money. Traditional institutions should be the custodians of the values of the society; they must not be complicit in criminal activities, binding their people with evil fetters, and so that they are not able to speak truth to thugs and corrupt politicians.

Twenty-four years of unbroken democracy, the people of Kogi East Senatorial District should have been accustomed to the fact that the people know what they want, and they must not be compelled to vote for any candidate who failed to deliver good governance when given the opportunity.

All over Nigeria, it has dawned on the people that thuggery is no longer fashionable, so reports about violence are no longer as widespread as they used to be in the past. Politicians have learned to endear themselves to the people in order to secure their votes every four years, they must produce credentials of positive impact on the lives of the people, through the provision of necessary infrastructure, an enabling environment for businesses to thrive, and by attracting federal government projects and incentives to their people.

In Kogi East all these are lacking, providing the clean slate for new entrants into politics to write promises like good rural roads, electricity, good rural healthcare facilities, rebuilding dilapidated primary schools, reconstruction of ancient markets, and the like in the campaign rhetoric.

In spite of the show of force by the police and other security agencies and multiple emphases by the INEC that no form of forgery could prevail in the elections as a result of the deployment of BVAS, goat-headed, misguided young men acquiesced to deceptive persuasions embarked on the senseless mission of snatching ballot boxes, threatening voters, disrupting the voting process, and even snatching result sheets from electoral officers in order to falsify election results.

The example of the stupidity of thugs was the timely gunning down by the police of one Ojochenemi Akayaba, a so-called fresh graduate of Kogi State University, Anyigba, who foolishly rode into a polling centre to disrupt the voting process last Saturday. We could blame Ojochenemi for being misguided, but the young man’s blood is on the head of candidates in the election who sent him on that suicide mission. They must be held to account for his death; they must not escape the wrath of the law. Our law enforcement agents must investigate Ojochenemi’s death and bring to book all politicians who recruited him into the political crime, brainwashed him, and gave him the weapons to terrorize the people. The youngman’s death must not be swept under the carpet as just the ugly end of another political thug in Kogi East.

The tragedy in  Kogi East Senatorial District is that this evil is occurring in a society full of men and women who are passionate about lifting the people from poverty. Not just passionate, but people who demonstrate commitment to Kogi East’s development through  individual interventions in the provision of social amenities in rural communities. Tired of failed promises by politicians who rape them at every election, many communities have had to resort to collecting widow’s mite from their people, in the process of executing projects to meet pressing needs of the people, mainly in rural areas.

This is a society under a state government that has, for almost eight years now, failed to pay civil servants salaries due to them; a society where political leaders steal the people’s resources to  live in revelry, building and buying up houses and luxury apartments in Abuja, Lagos, and Lokoja, investing in hotels and petrol stations,  by pinning the people down to penury. This is totally unacceptable. This time around, the people of Kogi East must elect leaders who are competent; leaders that are passionate about developing the senatorial district. The people of Kogi East must decide who should lead them into the future; thugs cannot decide the fate of the people; greedy, corrupt and blood-thirsty politicians cannot prevail this time around. No, never again.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must cancel the elections conducted in Kogi East Senatorial District last Saturday; especially in those areas where thugs snatched ballot papers and Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines in order to manipulate the results. There are a lot of evidences to point to the fact that the elections were not free and fair. The Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, must not permit illegality to stand for the second time in a row in Kogi East Senatorial District. No, never again.

Indeed, change in Kogi East must begin with this election. The people must rise to the challenge, and resist the evil men who have set in motion the process of stealing the will of the people. The people, all civil society organisations in Kogi State, traditional rulers, leaders of thought, former ministers, former National Assembly members, governors, and the elite must come together to challenge the evil forces who have held Kogi East down for too long. This peace-loving people of Kogi East do not deserve the leadership foist on them by blood-sucking politicians, who are encouraged by the inaction of federal government institutions to get away with murder. Thugs should not determine the fate of the people. It is unacceptable. This evil must not stand. Never again.

*Dr Abbah, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Forensic Investigation and Fraud Examiners of Nigeria, is based in Abuja.