Halima Alfa: Amazon of trust

For those whose motive is to derail the public discourse about the issue of unity and equality started by Barrister Halima Alfa, we want to assure you that your selfish umbrage against her would not stop her but rather fuel her campaign for a Kogi state that does not talk of the colour of the soil in your village or the tribe spoken by an individual as a criterion to attain leadership. If her campaign for equality, justice and togetherness for development offends anybody, she has no apology.

 We are all to blame for the failure of our state. When peered reviewed against the sisters state we were created with, a simple conclusion will be made and that is, make no mistake about it, they have all left us behind developmentally. The problem with Kogi state is leadership as Halima has always highlighted. She is therefore committing herself for a change in our leadership recruitment process that tribe is no factor in it.

 While the proponents of sectional politics are busy wasting their time preaching tribal political schism, Halima always infused her talks with personal reminiscences, calling on Kogites to respond to the call of citizenship by voting for the best candidates that they know would move the state forward.

Among the ordinary Kogites, her appeal for unity and tribal unity among the people strike a chord, as the ordinarily people in the streets are coming to term with the importance of unity among the people for the overall development of the state, the so called elites that have been responsible for the pain and underdevelopment we have witnessed are regrouping to create artificial lines to divide our people across tribal lines. I feel nothing but pity for them because in its time they have met their albatross in Barrister Halima Alfa who the people now recognised as their Amazon of unity and trust, a credential which the proponents of Igala agenda will never have in their life time.

She is making some solemn point about the next coming gubernatorial election and she is making those salient points with statistics that are obvious to the people as facts while are opponents are speaking out of malice and sentiments about a so called selfish agenda proposed to move our state backward. For example, is it not a fact that 10 per cent of Kogites that are involved in this separatist scheme called the Igala agenda are on top of the totem pole having more wealth than the remaining 90percent of Kogites, one of the biggest imbalance in wealth distribution in the country per state.

Statistics number two, in a decade personal income in our state has reduced and that shows we have a problem. The problem is that of leadership caused by the same proponents of an agenda that has devilishly brought our state to its knees till the coming of the present young governor who we should call the rainbow governor.

The problem they are having is that Yahaya Bello has succeeded to have pragmatically and systematically cleared the Augean stable, thereby closing their route to the treasury of the state. Barrister Halima has moved on and encouraged by the enthusiasm of the courageous Kogites she has met, those you would never see their faces on televisions.

For millions of Kogites the dreams for which they grew up as been shattered. Today the ideal that if you work hard and play by the rules you will be rewarded is lost on us in Kogi state and that is what Halima is against. You will do better this year than you did this term last year, your kids will do better than you, because of them that idea has been devastated for millions of Kogites.  Halima said no and that is the problem.

Halima has educated the people that previously, we selected people who have the wrong ideas and response to our problem and the idea that they failed propels them to have ideas that will shift our attention from their failures but rather join them in campaigning for their endorsed stooge whom they will lead to failure. And that is what the Saturday gubernatorial elections in our state is all about.

 Well, we have it their way for about two decades of democracy and we have gone downhill as a people. The middle class has collapsed and poverty is exploiting. Even they know that through their selfish agenda of years back, we were in the wrong track.

 For Halima, what is the alternative left to us Kogites? The new direction policies of Bello, that is what we should advocate by discarding the route that has led us to our present malady and embrace a route that has been laying the foundation for our developments which the APC represents. She is advocating that we already have a different type of governor who is not afraid to stick out his neck for our people. We need a governor committed to pulling together .The beginning of everything is believing that we can do better and Yahaya Bello is our ideal governor committed to doing better.

Musawa writes from Abuja.

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