Postscripting the panic Lokoja ‘endorsement rally’

President Bola Tinubu’s body language very evidently is sending frills and jitters to sections of his party faithful in Kogi State. Those who know Tinubu well know that he is not given to garrulity, or verbal frivolities. Say all you care and he simply supports his chin with his hand taking in the lines and hysteria. He seems rather more inclined to introspection and action, than verbal effusions. He has elected a strategic siddon look approach to domestic politics in the “confluence state.” All politics should ideally be local. But those with the self-entitled belief that they should hear from the lips of this god but are not, have plunged into a staccato of blunders and frenzy of missteps.

Saturday October 11, 2025, a group which tagged itself “Stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress, (APC)” from Kogi West Senatorial Zone congregated in Kabba, the political headquarters of the district. The assembly comprised in the main of past and present benefactors of Yahaya Bello, the immediate past Governor of the state. There were past and present state parliamentarians, the state executive council and party leaders. In a senatorial zone with three national assembly members notably Senator Sunday Karimi, the Member Representing Lokoja/Kotonkarfe in the House of Representatives, Danladi Suleiman Aguye, and his counterpart for Kabba-Bunu/Ijumu, Salman Idris, were absent. The body, without evident and discernible concurrence from the Eastern and Central Senatorial Zones, “endorsed” President Tinubu and the Kogi State Governor, Ahmed Ododo, for second terms. Ododo is barely 21 months in office by the way.

One week later on October 18, 2025, a supposed statewide “endorsement rally” was staged in Lokoja the Kogi State capital to validate the position earlier taken in Kabba concerning the inviolability of the Tinubu/Ododo 2027 return tickets. Those who monitored the event described it as a circus, a charade. A particular commentator said on his social media page: “I was in Lokoja yesterday. I was close to the venue of the stage-managed endorsement rally, held at the Old Lokoja Stadium. It was hugely boycotted by the foundation members of APC Kogi, the Abubakar Audu/Abiodun Faleke political family. Even Audu’s son, the Minister for Solid Minerals, Shaibu Audu, was noticeably absent. There was no political figure of substance at the event. It was a grand failure.”

Followers of politics in Kogi State have posited that the “endorsement” scam scheme is the holistic orchestration of Yahaya Bello. Since his recalcitrant miscalculation of running against Tinubu at the 2022 APC presidential primary even when more formidable aspirants stepped aside to clear the pathway for the President, there has been seething disaffection against Bello by Tinubu’s henchmen. At various strategy meetings of the President’s team, video clips of Bello’s preelection indiscretions and foibles were reportedly reviewed and analysed. In one particular video clip, Bello stormed out of meeting called by former APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, admonishing presidential aspirants at the time, to rally behind a particular aspirant. He threatened to address the press and stated that “no Jupiter” could dissuade him from pursuing his ambition to a successful conclusion.

There is yet another video clip, where Bello prosecuted a disdainful mimicry of Tinubu’s famous adjustment of his flowing agbada, the day he made the historic emilokan declaration in Abeokuta the Ogun State capital. The internet is nemesis. Bello attempted to atone for his lack of depth and circumspection in the immediate aftermath of the APC presidential primary, when he relinquished his erstwhile presidential campaign headquarters in Abuja to the Tinubu project as convening hub for youth mobilisation. Adherents of Kogi State politics, however, noted that Bello’s exuberance was at play again when the position of National Chairman of the APC was zoned to the North Central last July, following the resignation of Dr Abdullahi Ganduje a month earlier. Whereas Bello reportedly believed it was time for him to be “rewarded” by Tinubu being from the North Central, Tinubu favoured a more sober, less tempestuous university scholar, Prof Nentawe Yilwatda from Plateau State, hitherto Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction.

Buffeted by ongoing judicial inquest into allegations of the theft of hundreds of billions of naira under his watch as Governor between January 2016 and January 2024 in which Tinubu has refused to meddle, Bello is substantially at sea. He is therefore inclined to commit to everything and anything that will ingratiate him to Tinubu. Didn’t this very same Bello tell Nigerians back in 2016 on the occasion of his very first visit as Governor, to former President Muhammadu Buhari, that he would happily jump into a furnace of fire on Buhari’s orders because Buhari made him? Bello therefore desires the overarching canopy of President Tinubu for his political self-preservation by putting himself forward as chief campaigner for the President in Kogi State.

Alongside this, he craves the perpetuation of Ododo, who he singlehandedly handpicked to run in the November 2023 governorship poll in Kogi State, in office for a second term. There are loud insinuations that both men, and a few other kinsmen, hold the knife to the mutton of state resources. According to the commentator earlier cited on the Lokoja rally, the tragi-comedy relied on very reluctant participants. Attendees were predominantly monetarily-induced and literally dragged to the venue of the hoax, just to give an optical illusion of popular participation. Sadly, Bello did himself no favours when he threatened the Kogi State electorate with violence should they be inclined to other candidates than those he has prescribed for them. Bello the self-styled “white lion” of Kogi politics vowed that the people of Kogi State will cower when he roars.

Bello, who was fingered in untoward electoral practices as governor, including the animalistic novelty of procuring a helicopter to fire live bullets at voters on queue in his quest for reelection in 2019, has been roundly chided for threatening electoral mayhem come 2027. Murtala Ajaka who contested against Bello’s man Ododo in the 2023 poll, and Senator Karimi, are on the same page with the coming success of President Tinubu in 2027. They are unanimous in their conviction that he has acquitted himself substantially in Nigeria’s peculiarly difficult social, economic and political circumstances and deserves the overwhelming nod to complete his good run. But they don’t agree with Bello’s warmongering rhetoric in a state whose customary calm, charm, serenity and stability, has been unsettled by insecurity in recent months.

For the avoidance of doubt, a civilised endorsement rally was held in Lagos Tuesday October 21, 2025. It had in attendance all three of Tinubu’s successors: Babatunde Raji Fashola, Akinwumi Ambode and the incumbent, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. The state legislature led by the long-serving Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa, the traditional institution, leaders and elders of the state featured prominently at an event which was interactive and seamless. Typical Lagos-style, it broke into a carnival, without anyone professing his tigritude, without swear words, invectives and intimidation. Nobody was chanting ekwechi or echane battle songs. As my senior colleague and kinsman of blessed memory, Prof Ayo Olukotun would have put it while effecting a coinage from a Yoruba expression the Lagos event was a jelenkeist outing, easy and smooth.

This is why there must be decisive official reaction to Bello’s incendiary talk, beyond the cautionary notes already served by well-meaning political leaders in the state. Between the national leadership of the APC and the security superstructure, Nigerians expect some reprimand for Bello’s potentially combustive utterances. We live, rather sadly, in a country where order, sanity, integrity have been thrown to the dogs. Elsewhere, Yahaya Bello, an accused person, would not be the headliner of Tinubu’s reelection campaign. Not in John Dramani Mahama’s neighbouring Ghana. Tinubu indeed has demonstrated resolve when it mattered, to keep in abeyance those whose conduct is capable of impugning his reputation and that of his administration.

Tinubu booted out Betta Edu, Yilwatda’s predecessor from the federal executive council on allegations of corruption in January 2024, and showed the door to Uche Nnaji his Minister for Science and Technology for certificate forgery, weeks ago. Nyesom Wike, Tinubu’s Minister in-charge of the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT), did not irritate the nation’s ears last month, with his typical self-serving live television interviews during which he fritters public funds insulting and casting aspersions on others. He has most probably been put on leash. This Tinubu doesn’t seem to like idoti, as we allude to dirt, garbage and rubbish in Yoruba.

Bello should be assisted to spend his time in sober reflection and retrospection, regularly engaging with his attorneys on his variegated pendency before the courts. He should be more active on his prayer mat, penitent about his past, and prayerful about ongoing legal proceedings. Make no mistakes, there are precedents of former Nigerian governors who underwent extended, after-office “vacations” within the walls of our custodial centres, following verdicts about their times in office. Let him ask Jolly Tanko Nyame and Joshua Chibi Dariye, former governors of Taraba and Plateau states.

Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), is an Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Abuja.