Yahaya Bello on trial, just like the EFCC

I did not know that Yahaya Bello, the former governor of Kogi State, owned athletic sneakers.  I mean the kind possessed by such famous sprinters and long-distance runners as Usain Bolt and Eliud Kipchoge.

Following his assumption of the Kogi State governorship in January 2016, Mr. Bello wanted to be known as The Man in Kogi.  He presented himself as somewhat superhuman: a giant, the most intelligent, and the best spoken.

As is invariably the case in Nigeria, “winning” a second term was no problem for him. He was an authority that was never to be controverted.  He made it clear people could easily be crushed if they stood in his way, and on one occasion reminded them that he was also the best with a gun.

Bello appeared to consider the waters of Kogi rather shallow for the swimming needs of the shark that he was, so he spent a lot of time in endless sorties to Abuja.  There were many theories in circulation as to what he was doing there, including one that said there was a god in Aso Rock that he worshipped, but nobody was ever sure.

Back in Kogi, he demonstrated neither real interest nor capacity in solving problems or in taking advantage of its strategic location to build it into an economic hub.  While he built opulent mansions for himself wherever he wished, including in GRA Okene, Wuse Zone 4, Abuja, and Asokoro, Abuja, he saw no priority in paying civil servants or pensioners.

“This building is owned by an individual in Kogi, where hunger is the first name, in less than one year,” wrote Johnson Musa, the 32-year old civil servant who published drone images of Bello’s Asokoro mansion in 2017.  He was charged to court.

In Governor Bello’s hands, holding power appeared to be the mission, and as soon as he began his second term, it became clear that his ultimate objective was the presidency.  Declaring his interest in Abuja in April 2022, he promised to create 20 million millionaires.  He did not say how many he had created in Lokoja.

“I am running for president because I see a bright light shining at the end of the tunnel for our nation,” he said.  “…It is my intention to take custody of that light to pierce the dark spot in our past and present by eliminating every gap in our nationhood and fixing them.”

There was only one problem: instead of that “light” in Kogi, the COVID-19 vaccine denier was often accused of darkness and corruption and indolence and arrogance.  Even his own deputy governor, Simon Achuba, accused him in 2019 of perpetrating violence in the state.  “When you assess the government of Yahaya Bello, from day one it has been fighting, fighting and fighting anyone that has a different opinion from him becomes an enemy,” Achuba said.

It was no surprise that Bello failed to win the presidential nomination, itself a manipulated exercise.  Back in Kogi, the governor embarked on even deeper darkness in his final years in control.

• In December 2023, his exit around the corner, SaharaReporters reported that the EFCC had seized $760,910.84 in prepaid school fees for four children all the way to university graduation that he had made to the American International School, Abuja, as part of an alleged money laundering scheme.
• The following month, it took the National Judicial Council to stop him from appointing friends and members of his family, including his wife, Amina Bello, to positions of Judges and Kadis in the state. That led a group of civil society organizations to warn the nation’s judiciary against the emerging practice of personal and professional relatives taking the place of merit and transparency in the appointment of judges.
• Still in January, within days of Bello leaving the governorship, posters appeared in Abuja locations indicating his next target. They proclaimed: “APC Next Level. Alhaji Yahaya Bello as APC National Chairman. Leading the Change, Building a Stronger APC.”

But things then began to change, as in the same month, he was reported to be hiding in the same Government House he had ruled as a monarch for eight years, afraid to travel to his private mansion in Okene, an hour’s drive away.

And then, last week, Bello was suddenly naked in the market square: declared wanted by the EFCC, then stripped of  police protection and placed on the immigration watchlist.

He had tried to provide for the future: handpicking his own governorship successor to make sure it was a man who would protect and provide for him as he would himself.  That successor and “Godson,” Usman Ododo, was available for him in Abuja on Wednesday, allegedly using federal and state resources and arms to break Bello out of an official EFCC effort to arrest him.

The EFCC, following an Abuja court order dated April 17, wanted to arraign Bello in an N80.2 billion money-laundering scheme, a part of which appears to date from the year before he became governor.  But the former governor wanted to determine his own narrative, trying to manipulate  a court order in the home state he had dominated for eight years.  He falsely claimed the EFCC had breached an order preventing his arrest.

On Thursday, the EFCC was threatening to ask the military to fish out Bello to face the charges.  This is nonsense.  The military is an institution of last resort, its responsibilities restricted to conflicts and wars; it is not designed for investigations.  That it would have entered the head of the EFCC to consider dragging in soldiers is an indication of the rot in what we pretend to be democracy in Nigeria.  Unless you want Bello shot dead, hunting for wanted persons is the job of the police.

That said, I am surprised that Bello is not confidently fending off the EFCC in court.  For eight years, he projected a world of self-confidence.  He built homes like sheikhs and oligarchs.  He drove expensive cars and flaunted expensive wristwatches.

Governor Bello spoke as if he knew what he was saying and traveled as if he knew where he wanted to go.  I never really saw his shoes but in line with his image, I imagined they would be crocodile or alligator leather loafers costing thousands of dollars a pair.

“His Excellency, Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello, CON, the Executive Governor of Kogi State,” scurrying around in the dark, perhaps in a dress like the former Bayelsa governor Dipreye Alamieyeseigha fleeing Britain in 2005?

I never imagined the “White Lion” in running shoes, fleeing in the other direction whenever a child coughs or a dog barks.  In Nigeria, governors often walk as if they own the world, and in a way, they do.  They forget that the best you get is eight years, and that from that first day of the second term, the final date is immutable.

Sadly, Kogi’s Yahaya Bello has been the most forgettable of such figures since 1999.  Even if the court does not convict him, he has already convicted himself…as a liar and a coward.

The 20-year-old EFCC has not always covered itself in glory, either.  In five months, it will owe Nigerians its annual report, featuring an army of APC kleptocrats.

We wait.