POLITICISATION OF OFFA 2018 ROBBERY IS AN UNACCEPTABLE SACRILEGE - COS FAWENU
I have waited this long before putting my pen on paper to write on the charges of culpability brought against two former governors of Kwara State on the most unfortunate Offa robbery saga of 2018.
Having observed that the voices of the majority of Kwarans and Offa people in particular, including the families of the victims, are united in describing the development as a distraction and despicable response to a national tragedy, the coast is now clear for me to speak with frankness on the issue.
What the majority of the people, except a few who have not divested themselves from bad-blood political sentiment, are saying is very clear: "2026 is not 2018 and no politician, political party, or government in power would be allowed to pull wool over the eyes of Kwarans again to foist another clueless and callous government on the state through propaganda and campaigns of calumny."
Any righteous soul who wants good for Kwara State should be disturbed about any character that thinks it is by dancing on the graves of the dead that he or she would gain political advantage. To put it point-blank, Governor AbdulRahman's resurrection of the Offa robbery case does not only amount to abuse of court process, it also represents a despicable height of callousness against the people of Kwara South and Kwara North who are undergoing a harrowing experience in the hands of non-state actors that have taken over the state.
While Kwara North is bleeding and many communities in Kwara South have become ghost towns under Governor AbdulRahman's watch, it is very unfortunate that rather than find solutions to the problems his lacklustre approach to governance has brought upon the state, all that he could do is to resort to the frivolity of opening old wounds, not because he cares for the dead and their loved ones but to callously settle political scores.
The validity of the aforementioned presupposition rests on the repeated visitation of the Offa robbery at the eve of every election cycle. Obviously, that approach can no longer be taken as a mere coincidence but as a deliberate attempt to always play on both the intelligence and emotion of the people for political benefit, but the people can now see clearly through the curtain and can no longer be swindled with propaganda.
It is therefore not only pathetic but also an unimaginable abomination that anybody with blood flowing in his veins would think introducing unnecessary distraction into the polity when the state is grappling with an unprecedented level of insecurity, without any proactive solution in sight, will be applauded by Kwarans. More so when we have witnessed a similar card played in the past and the result we got are leaders who have power and resources but are mismanaging them.
Rather than secure the state and spread development across the length and breadth of the state, two of the three senatorial districts have become enclaves of non-state actors. And all that the government, which has the constitutional responsibility to tame the evil, could do is to think that wasting the emotion of the people on the bad memory of a national tragedy that befell the state eight years ago is the right way to go.
With this new low approach to politics and governance at the eve of another election cycle in the country by the outgoing governor of Kwara State, we are forced to ask: could it mean they have perfected plans to gain another clandestine political advantage from the blood of hundreds of Kwarans being killed by bandits as they did with the Offa robbery in 2019? Because as we speak, a great number of communities in Kwara South have been deserted; we are forced to ask, besides the tragedy of the loss of their loved ones, what is their future political prospect in a game that is determined by voting population? Or is there more than meets the eye in the unfolding events and the reason for the unperturbed stand of our governor?
We are forced to think that way and to ask probing questions because, except for evil-mindedness, why would a government that has been dead silent and obviously unconcerned about the killings, kidnapping, and displacement of the people of Kwara South and Kwara North suddenly wake up to think that the brutalised and abandoned people of Kwara State, who are bleeding from their noses to pay ransom to rescue their people from bandits on a daily basis, would accept that abusing the judicial process to resurrect the Offa robbery case and pin it on supposed political adversaries would be welcomed as a genuine concern for justice?
Please Sir, Mr Governor, this pretentious concern is not the empathy expected by the people of Ifelodun, Edu, Patigi, Kaiama, Ekiti, and other local government areas who are living in daily fear of death that may come at any time, as if we have no government that should provide both security for the generality of the people and succour for the victims of your absentee style of governance.
Perhaps, the government of the day needs to be reminded that whatever happened in the past that made Kwarans mistake propaganda for progressive politics is an accident of history that can never be repeated again. Kwarans are far more enlightened than that low level of bad-blood politics.
Kwara State is not only the hub of Western education in Northern Nigeria; the people of Kwara State were leading technocrats; in fact, the torchbearers that helped Ahmadu Bello compete effectively in the premiership era of Nigeria’s development with his contemporaries in Western and Eastern Nigeria. It is therefore unfortunate that the current government of Kwara State prides itself on the nomenclature of merely naming the state House after the late sage above security of lives and property, while allowing killings and banditry associated with anti-Western education ideologists (Boko Haram) to take over the state in a manner no one in his right mind would ever think Kwara State could experience. Rather than face the menace and stamp it out, what we are witnessing is pettiness and callousness combined.
In conclusion, as a religious society that places high premium on the memory of the dead, the politicisation of the Offa tragedy in the manner the Kwara State Government is going about it is nothing other than unacceptable sacrilege.
Not minding that he claimed personal responsibility when he was not the one responsible, the Amalekite that played this manner of game with the death of King Saul in the Bible was not spared by David. The death of one person is not a joke, talk less of that number that died in the dastardly Offa robbery of 2018.
I hereby call on religious leaders, traditional rulers, and other well-meaning Kwarans who have the ears of Governor AbdulRasak AbdulRahman to draw his attention to the spiritual implications of dancing on the graves of the dead and desist from it in order to avoid irreversible divine retribution that such action may attract.
