Yahaya Bello: Is it End of the Road Yet?

Wahab Sunmonu

There’s an ominous, cliffhanging silence as Nigerians watch with bated breath, the face-off between the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and former Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State.

Bello has blatantly refused to appear before the commission, which had accused him of questionable financial dealings that range from the obnoxious to the outlandish.

What was supposed to be a routine visit has become a cat-and-mouse chase, where only one winner would emerge. And it would not be Bello.

Sometime in April, operatives of the EFCC stormed Bello’s Abuja residence Gestapo-style to arrest him. What followed was nothing short of a scene out of a gung-ho movie as the operatives cordoned off the streets.

But Bello’s successor, Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo, broke through the barriers and whisked him away.

The day after, the EFCC, in a statement, officially declared Bello wanted in connection with an alleged case of money laundering to the tune of N80,246,470,089.88 (Eighty Billion, Two Hundred and Forty-Six Million, Four Hundred and Seventy Thousand and Eighty-Nine Naira, Eighty Eight Kobo).

It would emerge that Bello, as governor, allegedly withdrew $720,000 from the state’s coffers to pay his children’s school fees at the American International School, Abuja. The school has since returned the money to EFCC coffers.

However, Bello’s lawyer, Abdulwahab Muhammed, claimed that his client was in his village when the EFCC operatives besieged his Abuja residence. After obtaining a warrant of arrest and enrolment order, the EFCC later arraigned Bello, but he was absent.

“It is needful to state that Bello is not above the law and would be brought to justice as soon as possible,” the EFCC said in its statement. Subsequently, the police officers attached to Bello were withdrawn while the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) placed him on a watch list as a ‘potential flight risk amid ongoing legal challenges.’

Penultimate Friday, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja rejected Bello’s request to stay execution in his trial before Justice Emeka Nwite because the EFCC had appealed the contempt application filed against the EFCC chairman, Ola Olukoyede. Justice Nwite, in his ruling, rejected the application made by Bello through his lawyer.

Since it was established over two decades ago to combat economic and financial crimes, many past governors have been guests of the agency, and, despite the hoopla and hype that usually surround such invitations, only a few have successfully been convicted of whatever financial improprieties levelled against them. So, such invitations are almost routine and undisruptive. It, therefore, beggars logic why the self-acclaimed ‘White Lion’ would entertain any fear of an institution symbolised by ‘a mere eagle’.

Going into hiding is only a testament to the fact that Bello did so much damage to the resource-rich state’s treasury before handing over to his cousin, Governor Ododo.

Usually, as a high net-worth individual or politically exposed person, the EFCC does not just swoop on people like a mere criminal.

The EFCC chairman, Olukoyede, revealed that out of respect for his office, “I called Yahaya Bello, as a serving governor, to come to my office to clear himself. I shouldn’t have done that.

“But he said because a certain senator had planted over 100 journalists in my office, he would not come. I told him that he would be allowed to use my private gate to give him a cover, but he said my men should come to his village to interrogate him.” Bello left office in January 2024 and refused all entreaties to honour the EFCC invitation.

It’s been over a week since the court order, and it is almost two months since Bello began his shameful hide-and-seek game with the EFCC. Now, the knives are out.

The period of détente is over. The commission will apply every orthodox and unorthodox method to get Bello for having rubbished and repudiated every courtesy extended to him. Bello should expect no more respect for his person or rights. What will follow is a humiliating arrest that would signal the swiftest downfalls in Nigerian political history in recent memory.

Indeed, a very few trajectories in the annals of Nigerian politics compare to the high heights Bello once reached before ending in the low depths he now inhabits. His should have been one of the most heart-warming Nigerian political stories.

He was barely 40 years old when fate trumped him as the fourth democratically-elected Governor of Kogi State in the most dramatic of circumstances. He had contested the 2015 governorship primaries of the All Progressives Congress, APC, but lost to the late Prince Abubakar Audu, who had almost won the election proper.

Sadly, Audu died before he assumed office. As the first runner-up, Bello replaced the deceased and became the youngest governor in Nigeria at the time. He went on to win a second term, which lapsed in January 2024. The world was at his feet. And the world would have been his oyster with a modicum of responsibility and competence.

But he was an aberration in power. Across the world, there is a clamour for youth inclusion in politics. Nigeria is no exception.

Thus, there were expectations that as a youth in a leadership position, Bello would be a beacon of creative force, a source of innovation and dynamic leadership, and markedly different from the old order. But he proved to be worse.  His exuberance and sheer incompetence made him veer wildly beyond what many believed were appropriate or gubernatorial. His cascade of embarrassing gaffes crescendoed at the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, when he repeatedly denied the existence of the virus in his state.

He said on a TV programme, “COVID-19 is not our business in Kogi State. We have more prominent issues, more pertinent issues, more serious matters that we are attending to in Kogi State.”

When asked if he would take the vaccine publicly like other governors, he posited, “I don’t need the vaccine; nothing is wrong with me. I’m hale and hearty — 100 percent hearty.” Yet, people died of Covid-19 in Kogi unreported.

Every election held during his time was marred with violence, fraud, and thuggery. In September 2020, he was on the list of politicians that the United States Department of State placed on a visa ban for undermining democracy in Nigeria.

He flayed the decision but would later re-echo his infamous ‘ta-ta-ta-ta’ chant (an oral representation of the sound of gunfire), a call to violence, during a rally for the re-election of the late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu in Akure, Ondo State.

It should not have come to this sorry pass for Bello who should otherwise have been a political phenom judging by his divine ascendance to political power, but is now a cautionary tale and, even worse, an unwholesome testimonial of young people in a position of power.

Power, no doubt, made Bello lose contact with reality. Thus, he deserves no pity. From the height of approval that greeted his emergence on the political scene, Bello has plumbed into the depth of disdain and set himself on the path to self-immolation.

He wore his imperial hubris like a badge of honour – a result of an overestimation of his competence, accomplishments, and capabilities.

He became a classic example of how easy it is to tempt the fates, especially when garbed in undeserved and ill-fitting garments of success and leadership, which makes one feel bullet-proofed against disaster or failure.  How Bello extricates himself from this legal and political siege remains to be seen.

*Sunmonu wrote from Okenne, Kogi State