APC Elders Petition Buhari, Insist Yahaya Bello ‘Unfit’ For Second Term

Stakeholders of the Kogi state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Nigeria’s ruling party, have petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari, demanding that the governor of the state, Yahaya Bello, should not be given a second term.

Naija News that the APC Elders claimed that Governor Bello received about N344billion in the last 38 months of his stewardship, without doing anything with the allocations.

They noted that the governor is owing salaries, pensions and gratuities, they said, adding that there are no visible capital projects on the ground anywhere in the state.

The APC stakeholders described Bello as non- performing and violent in a petition, which was signed by the Convener of the Kogi APC Stakeholders Forum, Sen. Alex Kadiri.

The petition reads: “Governor Yahaya Bello was never elected by the good people of Kogi State. The death of Abubakar Audu made it possible for Bello to be Kogi State Governor. He has shown everyone that he lacks leadership abilities. He can’t fight for the rights and privileges of Kogi people.

“We request you to step down your support for the candidature of Governor Yahaya Bello for the forthcoming election in Kogi State.

“If the party fields him as a candidate, we are sure of losing the state to the opposition.”

The APC stakeholders gave insights into how Governor Bello allegedly mismanaged the statutory allocations.

They said: “For the past 38 months including February 2019 Governor Yahaya Bello has not paid full salaries to the workers of Kogi State, despite the fact that the state received full allocation from the Federation Account as detailed below: Statutory allocation, Excess Crude and Value Added Tax (VAT) (N132b); Internally Generated Revenue by the state(N51b); total allocations to local governments(N111b).

“Total funds received by the state and local governments: N294 billion. The other funds received by the state are as below: Bail Out (N20b); Paris Club refunds 1, 2, and 3 (N19b); and refunds for road construction by previous governments (N11b).

“The governor had conducted multiple staff screening for both the state and the local governments. And from the report of the screening, the monthly wage bill (state, local governments and pensions) at the inception of the administration stood at N5.8 billion. After screening, this figure reduced to N4.4 billion.

“From the table above it is evidently clear that the total revenue received by the state government was more than enough to settle all salaries, pensions and gratuities with huge balance remaining for overheads and capital projects.

“It is very instructive to note that even without bailout and other funds received outside statutory allocation, Governor Yahaya Bello could have still paid all salaries including pensions without conducting multiple screening and inflicting pains on Kogi State and local government workers. This must hurt APC at the polls.

“Even after the screening, all salaries and pensions payments were paid using arbitrary percentages, thereby still owing workers huge outstanding salaries.”

They said they had tried to seek presidential and party interventions to call Bello to order but to no avail.

The stakeholders added: “We respectfully write to bring to your esteemed attention, the following facts and issues associated with our party and the governor of Kogi State.

“We had earlier, during the life of your administration petitioned against our governor, Yahaya Bello, on several occasions.

“The party, as a result, set up the Tony Momoh Committee to work on the issues in our petitions in Kogi State APC. The result of this committee’s work is kept secret in the cooler without the party or the government addressing any of the issues to date.

“Another committee was set up under the chairmanship of General Garba. We appeared before the committee, and made far-reaching recommendations, till this day, that report is still also kept secret and under lock and key and no action taken by the party,” the petition added.