Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State messy secrets has been exposed by Senator Dino Melaye: “Investigations have shown that over N1.3 billion was callously lavished on the staff verification and auditing exercise while N270 million was used just to write the report of the exercise that obviously seemed to have died on arrival.”

“But what is now news is the amount of tax pays’ money allegedly used in fostering the pain-inflicting exercise of the cruel confused Direction Team of Governor Yahaya Bello. After assuming office on January 27, 2016, Governor Bello’s administration inaugurated a staff verification and auditing committee on February 22, 2016, aimed at curtailing leakages, sanitizing the state’s civil service and weed ghost workers from the government’s pay rolls but since then, more than three other committees headed by different people have been inaugurated to undertake the same responsibility given the manner the various committees saddled with the responsibility of fighting corruption in the civil service were on their own caught in the act they were paid to fight.”

“Governor Bello and his bamboozled team still went ahead to install another back-up committee headed by the state’s Auditor-General Alhaji Yusufu Okala to work from the backend simultaneously with the Agbaji’s committee.”

“Following the allegation of the sharp practice associated with Agbaji’s report, 12 members out of the total 29 members of the panel declined appending their signatures on the final reports and distanced themselves from whatever was the outcome. This further led the government to disband the Agbaji’s panel and empowered the Okala’s back-up panel to fully take charge of the verification exercise.”

“As far as this staff verification and audit is concerned, there is no end to formulation and inauguration of Governor Bello’s amoebic and amorphous committees as he is allegedly bent on fighting vendetta and scoring voodoo political goals while subjecting the state’s workforce to begging, indebtedness and all form of in human treatments.”

“As at the time of writing this piece, another committee was also said to be in place and were still doing almost everything claimed to have been done by the previous committees, a clear indication that there is an unwavering confusion in the so-called ‘New Direction’ camp and it is an empirical proof that Governor Bello and his handlers lack the 21st century initiatives needed to upgrade the workforce and place it on a productive pedestal.”

“Bello’s staff verification and auditing exercise is in all standards and judgments politically motivated and was never meant to better the state’s fortunes so that, despite the directive of the state House of Assembly to suspend the exercise while asking members of the panel to appear before it, but for the reign of executive impunity, Governor Bello never gave a dime.”