Few months out from the Kogi State governorship election, citizens and stakeholders are still expressing their dread due to the state’s violent election past, which has been accompanied by accusations and denials from the ruling party and opposition.
On June 9, 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) made public the full list of candidates standing for governor and their running mates.
Following the primaries for the major parties that took place between March 27 and April 17, 2023, political violence appears to be changing course.
Since 1999, the state has had a history of violence during elections; the last governorship poll in the state was held in 2019 with no fewer than 10 deaths, 79 cases of violence and election malpractices recorded across the 21 local government areas of the state as recorded by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD).
Two persons were killed by stray bullets when hoodlums tried to snatch ballot boxes at the Adankolo polling unit during the 2019 election.
The most shocking report was the killing of the PDP women leader, Salome Abuh, who was burnt alive at Ochadamu, while her killer, one Ocholi Edicha, was subsequently sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison by a High Court sitting in the state.
During the February 2023 presidential election, there were reports of interference of thugs in some polling units in Anyigba and Dekina in the Kogi East and Mopa in the Kogi West as well as parts of Kogi Central, where voting materials were allegedly carted away by thugs.
A worrisome development is the ongoing war of words by the camps of Governor Bello and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) governorship candidate, Muritala Ajaka, whose convoy was allegedly attacked by gunmen while his party’s campaign office located around the Paparanda Kpata Market was also vandalised by suspected thugs, who destroyed billboards.
A similar attack on the convoy of Bello in which some aides of the governor were said to have been injured was reported.
The violence spree was also heightened by the attack on a radio station, Radio Kogi Ochaja, where property worth millions of naira was looted and destroyed by gun-wielding hoodlums after beating up the staff members and security guards.
Ajaka accused the state government of victimisation, saying, “The problem of the state is the state government. They are not allowing freedom of speech and freedom of choice.”
“Democracy is about allowing the people to choose the person of their choice, but what the state government is doing is that they are forcing people. If you are not supporting the candidate of the governor, they treat you as an enemy.”
On his part, Bello, while speaking on the attack in his convoy stated, “Let it be the first and last an antelope will cross the lion’s way. Next time, there will be no warning.”
With the trend of violence, some stakeholders expressed concern and warned of an impending crisis ahead of the election.
In line with Ajaka’s claim, members of the Igala/Bassa Socio-cultural Association, an umbrella body of all Igala/Bassa associations, during a protest at the Defence Headquarters, Abuja, in June, described the political atmosphere in the state as tense.
They accused the state government of victimising political opponents.
The leader of the group, Jacob Okpanachi, shared, “People cannot come out to own up to the party they belong to. Killings have been going on in Kogi State, most especially during elections.”
But the governor, through his Commissioner for Information and Communications, Kingsley Fanwo, debunked the allegations of killings in the state, assuring that the state would be peaceful during the forthcoming November 11 election.
The Chairman of the Kogi East Elders Council, Arch. Gabriel Aduku recently raised an alarm over tension being generated by the forthcoming governorship election in Kogi State, and called on relevant authorities to wade into the situation to save people from being killed outrightly.
Aduku, who is also chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), said the election scheduled for November 11, 2023, might not hold if violence continued unabated.
According to him, it has become undemocratic a situation where the powers that be would not allow political opponents and other stakeholders to run for political offices in the state, subjecting them to intimidation and threat.
“You can see that there will be no election at the end of the day if this violence continues to occur, and my feeling is that there may be no election in Kogi State.
“It is an obvious thing because people are allowed to carry arms and go to specific places that are not favourable to the administration to destroy them. You have them on record, I can’t mention them one after the other for you.
“In the last three weeks, you can see the violence coming and other plans may be on. I am on the radar because I am preaching for a peaceful election to hold. But we have experts who use violence for election, rather than using peaceful manner. So it is a great concern to us.
“It is very scary that going into the election, it becomes concepts of violence, concepts of destruction, this is being openly said now. We are concerned about it. I am concerned about it because I am at the centre of it, how to ensure we have a peaceful election.
“This insecurity is not even good for our relationship as a state. Some of us are privileged to know how Kabba province was, and how we related very well under the regional government.
“And now it is a state and we have resources which God has planted in that state for us to use but we are jogging around, and we don’t seem to have the right leadership, and it is getting worse.”
Although stakeholders have continued to speak about the spate of politically motivated electoral violence in Kogi State and indeed Nigeria they blamed impunity and the culpability of security agencies in fuelling the violence.
They noted that the issue is not new, but maybe it is more intense this time around considering what is at stake.
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