Kogi Stste Governor Yahaya Bello has warned individuals and political Lilliputians who are fond of spreading falsehood in order to destabilize the State to desist or prepare to face the full wrath of the law.
Governor Bello, who gave the warning in a statement issued in Lokoja on Tuesday signed by the state Commissioner for Information and Communication, Mr Kingsley Fanwo, lamented the unfortunate utterances heating the state’s political atmosphere.
The governor was particular about comments reportedly made by the Governorship Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Muritala Yakubu Ajaka, on security and political matters in the state.
According to the statement “We wouldn’t have bothered to respond to the candidate of the SDP who is dipping himself in the messy mud and having an ignominious macabre dance on the sensibilities of the people of Kogi and Nigerians as a whole.
“It is important to tell Nigerians and the world that Yakubu- Ajaka, the said SDP governorship candidate, is on an agenda of whipping sentiments, ethnicity, divisive tendencies.
“He is spreading falsehood with reckless abandon so as to put on himself, a garment of importance and create unnecessary air around himself as a contender that he is not.
“The people of Kogi and Nigerians know Yakubu Ajaka and they know that his intention is to create ethnic division and blow his own ego.
“We know the contenders and the pretenders and he is not a political threat as far as Kogi is concerned, ” he said.
The statement added that the ignorance of Yakubu Ajaka and his team was such a flourishing folly, who thought that the governor was an interested party and would therefore, allow his state to become a state of anomie and lawlessness.
“I am the governor of all the people of Kogi and I owe them a duty of care and security, which I swore to protect them and protect them I shall” the statement said.
He reiterated that his administration had no clandestine plan to frame up anyone, “not to talk about political Lilliputians with questionable character.
“As a government, we will not condone reckless statements as we urge the security agencies to arrest the current trend by acting decisively against inflammatory statements.
“A lack of action has emboldened some political opportunists to think they can spread lies, incite the people, play politics of ethnic profiling and still get away with them.
“Ajaka knows what he has done and should carry his cross boldly instead of hiding behind one finger. We have no hand in the problems that his unbridled inordinate ambition has brought upon him.”
According to him, the tactless and dubious attempt to blackmail media practitioners shows the myopia of Yakubu- Ajaka and his co-travellers.
“History has shown that no one can ever defeat the media, especially when practitioners are on the path of truth. The media won’t be cowed by an unknown, misled, dubious and unguarded political minor,” he said.
The governor, however, assured all political parties and candidates of their safety as they go about their electioneering campaigns as “this government will not succumb to the blackmail of the unpopular candidate of the SDP.”
The SDP governorship candidate, had reportedly accused Governor Yahaya Bello and his administration of extra-judicial killings and not allowing level playing ground for opposition parties in the forthcoming Kogi governorship polls slated by INEC for November 11, 2023.
