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| Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state |
Alhaji Yahaya Bello of the All Progressive Congress takes
the reins of government amidst heightened controversy and court cases
challenging his election, writes JACOB OKPANACHI
The swearing
in to office on Wednesday 27th January, 2016, of Alhaji Yahaya Bello of the All Progressive Congress
as Kogi state governor may have calmed nerves in that confluence state
after a fractious campaign and a rigorous and winding election process. The
crowd at the Lokoja township stadium had cheered and roared as the businessman was
installed as the first non-Igala to occupy the historic Lugard House, the
state’s seat of the government.
Even as Bello
gradually settles into office, a thick cloud of uncertainty still hangs in the
horizon. Many people fear that he may never really settle into office and may
have his tenure short-circuited through the law courts.
Since
the state was created, it has been the lot of the dominant Igala ethnic group
of Kogi East Senatorial zone to produce the governor of Kogi. After years of
fruitless agitation for power shift based on consensus by the state’s of olitical
leaders, Bello’s inauguration achieved the feat on the designs of providence. Bello
had become the choice of the APC following the sudden death of Abubakar Audu,
candidate of the party who was in a pole position to be declared governor
before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said the state
governorship election held on November 21, 2015, was inconclusive.
To Isiaq
Ajibola, the chairman for Media and Publicity of Bello’s inauguration Committee,
the hand of God was evident in Bello’s election and subsequent inauguration as
governor of Kogi state. How much that hand of fate will sustain him will remain
a conjecture. What is certain is that the plethora of legal challenges to his
election is sure to be pursued with greater vigour.
There
are no less than six court cases at the Kogi State Gubernatorial and House of
Assembly election petition tribunal and the other courts challenging his claim
to the governorship. The case instituted by Hon.
Abiodun Faleke, Audu’s running mate and sitting member of the Federal House of
Representatives is the most threatening.
Faleke claims to be the rightful person to inherit the votes cast for
the Audu/Faleke joint ticket. Represented by a formidable legal team of
Wole Olanipekun, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Faleke had earlier approached the court
to stop the supplementary election, arguing before a Federal High Court sitting
in Abuja that following the death of Audu, he ought to inherit the party’s
victory.
Justice
Gabriel Kolawole had refused to enter jurisdiction and asked Faleke to look
elsewhere. Faleke had therefore approached the election petition tribunal,
bluntly refusing to accept his party’s decision to field him alongside Bello as
a running mate, a situation that forced Bello to eventually stand in the supplementary
election all on his own. On 27thJanuary, 2016, he was sworn in
alone, the first time an ‘elected’ governor in Nigeria would be sworn in
without a deputy.
This
anomaly, according to a lawyer , could void the ticket of the APC in the
election and cause the sacking of the governor. The Constitution requires that
a governorship candidate runs with a running mate before his candidacy could be
valid. Faleke made it clear he was not running with Bello, and after Bello’s
victory he said he would not be available for the inauguration. Understandably,
this is one of the grounds in the PDP’s petition challenging the APC victory at
the polls.
Before
his shocking death, Audu had polled an unassailable 240,857
votes to beat the ruling Peoples Democratic Party’s Governor Idris Wada who
scored 199,514 votes, to the second place. However, because the margin of win was
less than the total number of voters in the 91 polling units spread over 18
local government areas of the state where votes were cancelled, INEC had
declared the election inconclusive. To conclude the supplementary election, APC
had to replace Audu.
Bello, who came next to Audu in the party’s primaries held
earlier in 2015 was the party’s favourite, even as many had alleged that he had
leaned towards the PDP following his earlier primaries loss to Audu. Bello won the
December 5, 2015 supplementary election, polling 6,885 votes to bring the APC’s
total haul to 247,752 against Wada’s 5,363 votes and a final figure of 204, 877.
Efforts
to pacify Faleke have so far failed with many political leaders of his party in
the Kogi Central and Kogi West senatorial districts accusing him of
jeopardising the opportunity of the minority ethnic groups to wrest power from the
dominant Igala of Kogi East.
Former
governor, Captain Idris Wada of the PDP is also at the Justice Halima Mohammed tribunal
to upturn Bello’s victory, so is the Labour Party and its candidate. The PDP claims
that the death of Audu had rendered his votes irrelevant and that Yahaya Bello
or anyone else could not inherit them. It contends that INEC’s acceptance of
the replacement of Audu with Bello meant that the APC had two candidates in the
same election, a situation the party said was neither contemplated by the 1999
Constitution, nor the Electoral Act 2010, as amended.
The
initial effort by the Labour Party to stall the inauguration of Bello had
earlier suffered a technical knock-out as Justice Mohammed said the party’s
motion-exparte was defective.
How Bello navigates the legal landmines in the next few weeks remains to
be seen.
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