BY BUSY BRAIN
For the past two weeks, the action of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been making news and forming opinions in the media. From the Bobrisky money laundering saga to the Cubana Chief Priest case, and now, the EFCC has migrated the media attention from the creative industry to the political arena with Yahyah Bello’s arrest warrant and wanted notice.
The EFCC declared ex-Governor Yahaya Bello wanted for an offense relating to money laundering. The notice of the EFCC indicated that Yahyah Bello’s last known address is 9, Benghazi Street, Wuse Zone 4, Abuja, and the agency asked anybody with useful information about the former governor’s whereabouts to contact any of the commission’s offices across the country.
Wherever Yahyah Bello is right now, he must be laughing at the EFCC as an agency performing Nollywood movies. Yahyah Bello has seen himself as the sacred lamb in the political corridor who cannot be used for a sacrifice and this serves as the reason he rushed to the Presidency to evade arrest. Ironically, disappointing advice issued by the Presidency asking Yahyah Bello to submit himself to the agency stirred his sudden disappearance. To Yahyah Bello, the EFCC’s wanted notice will be like a Nollywood series, but it is an embarrassment to an ex-governor.
Unarguably, Yahyah Bello is a typical example of the reason youths cannot be trusted with power in Nigeria. Or how would one describe the action of an opportunist who served two terms governorship tenure and crippled the State to a state of ruthlessness? In all ramifications, Kogi State should be one of the most developed states in Nigeria with laudable infrastructures. But the visible infrastructure is the debris of the cement factory smiling at travelers on the way to Abuja.
As a matter of fact, Yahyah Bello’s offense is no longer a convolution. It is the usual practice of the power mongers with a self-aggrandizement agenda. It is only confusing why he is trying to evade arrest at all costs. The ruffian show of shame of the incumbent Governor of Kogi to shield his wanted boss from arrest is another embarrassing scene of the 21st century. Worse of its kind.
Funnily enough, at Yahyah Bello’s Abuja residence on Wednesday, a group of armed men, identified as Special Forces, along with officers from the Nigeria Police Force prevented the EFCC operatives from apprehending him with the assistance of the current governor who escorted him out of the location in the governor’s vehicle.
It is pitiable and disheartening that the gesture of Governor Ododo was described as loyalty. In an actual sense, who should earn Ododo’s loyalty between the ex-governor who allegedly laundered 80 billion Naira and the entire Kogi people? I think it is a ripe time for ‘Kogi citizens to awake from their slumber.
With the recent moves by the EFCC, it seems the agency is fully ready to walk along the renewed hope agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The agency should take its aggressive war against corruption to the likes of Yahyah Bello in other States. The wanted notice served on Yahyah Bello is a well-deserved embarrassment. There is hope for a better Nigeria.
