It is not the drums of politics that announce Yahaya Bello these days, but the hush of marbled hallways in his Abuja estate. The former governor has traded convoys for chandeliers, yet his voice still sails into Kogi like incense that lingers long after the flame is gone.
Only months out of office, Bello has mastered the art of retreat without surrender. His mansion doubles as a command post, a place where loyalty is polished like silverware. From here, he counsels newly minted lawmakers, reminding them that elections are never won alone, but sustained by obedience to the house of Bello.
In a video now threaded across social media, he welcomed Hassan Shado, the victor of Kogi’s Okura by-election. Bello’s counsel was stern, even paternal: support Governor Ododo in everything, even the unfamiliar, even the inexplicable. Politics, he hinted, was not the noble craft of independence but the quiet sport of alignment.
Such words startled many Nigerians, who took to X to mock what they called the burial of democracy in plain sight. “We are in a zoo,” one user spat, despairing at a country where lawmakers are trained to bow before they sit. Others warned of revolution, of citizens tired of watching actors in a rigged theatre.
Yet Bello, ever the godfather, insists it is unity, not subservience, that holds the ruling party upright. He speaks of continuity as if it were inheritance, a reign that stretches beyond terms of office, weaving his protégé Ododo into a dynasty of loyalty. After Ododo, he suggests, another will come. Always from inside.
The irony? Bello, once chased by anti-graft agencies and critics alike, seems more comfortable in this shadowed monarchy than he ever did under the sunlit scrutiny of office. He has built a throne without a crown, a kingdom without ballots. And from his estate, the silence feels louder than the statehouse itself.
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