‘Protesters for Ocholi’s replacement are political jobbers’

The Director General of Media and Publicity to the Governor of Kogi State, Kingsley Fanwo has described those agitating for immediate appointment of a federal minister from Kogi State to replace the late Barrister James Ocholi on the Federal Executive Council as political jobbers that have no means of livelihood.

Fanwo who stated this during a chat with journalists in Lokoja said the people of the state had absolute confidence in President Muhammadu Buhari to making a good choice at the appropriate time, insisting that staging a protest to force the hand of the President is “reckless, mischievous and a misrepresentation of the position of Kogi people on the issue”.

This was coming against the background that the former APGA governorship candidate in the 2015 governorship election in Kogi State Comrade Goodman Akwu led a one million man match to Aso Rock Villa to call on President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately appoint a replacement for the late Minister of State for Labour and Employment. He said the protest match was to press home the need to fill the vacuum that had left out the people of the state for over seven months without a ministerial representative.

According to Akwu, government is a continuum with no room for vacuum. “Just like the tire of a car which must be replaced when it goes bad for the car to move, the slot for Kogi must be filled. “The content of my letter is for the immediate replacement of the exclusion of the people from the government which they helped to install, so that the people can be liberated from socio-economic exclusion and political exclusion as well. “It is a serious disconnect that has never happened before and we say no. We have waited patiently for seven months and we say no to that and we are asking the President to quickly fill the vacuum,” he said.