Follow Us on Google
By Alfred Onoja
When Ahmed Usman Ododo assumed office as Governor of Kogi State on January 27, 2024, he inherited more than the machinery of government from Yahaya Bello; he inherited a development architecture that had been built over eight years around infrastructure, education, healthcare, workers’ welfare and institutional renewal. The more consequential question, therefore, was never whether Ododo would announce a completely different philosophy, but whether he could preserve the gains, complete unfinished projects and convert the foundation into something broader and more sustainable.
Nearly three years into the administration, the evidence points increasingly towards consolidation rather than abandonment. Bello’s administration established major institutions and infrastructure; Ododo has concentrated on completing inherited projects while simultaneously extending development to the grassroots.
That continuity is particularly evident in education, healthcare, agriculture, roads and fiscal management. The Kogi government itself has explicitly described the approach as building on the accomplishments of its predecessor.
The first measure of a successor is what he does with the projects he inherits. In this respect, Ododo has demonstrated an unusual willingness to take ownership of projects associated with Bello rather than allowing political succession to become an excuse for abandonment.
The clearest example is education. Bello’s administration invested heavily in model schools and tertiary institutions, including the development of Confluence University of Science and Technology. Ododo has continued this trajectory by completing and commissioning the GYB Model Science Secondary Schools at Nagazi and Okebukun in 2026. The Nagazi project, for example, includes classrooms, laboratories, a library, ICT facilities and a CBT centre.
These are not merely political monuments to a predecessor; they are public assets whose value increases only when a succeeding administration completes, equips and puts them into use. Ododo’s decision to commission such projects underlines the central character of his administration: continuity as a development strategy, not continuity as political nostalgia.
But perhaps the strongest evidence of consolidation is in healthcare, where Ododo has taken the developmental logic of the Bello years from major institutions to the last mile. Bello’s administration invested in larger health infrastructure, but Ododo has placed extraordinary emphasis on primary healthcare, recognising that a magnificent hospital in an urban centre cannot substitute for a functional health centre in a rural community.
His administration launched the rehabilitation and upgrading of 88 additional Primary Healthcare Centres with more than ₦7 billion committed, alongside about 70 facilities already undergoing renovation, with an overall objective of bringing more than 150 PHCs to functional Level-2 status across Kogi’s 21 local government areas. In November 2025, the first phase of 80 revitalised PHCs was commissioned.
The facilities include modern infrastructure, power solutions, water facilities and medical equipment. This is arguably one of Ododo’s most consequential interventions because it converts the abstract idea of healthcare development into a geographically distributed system that ordinary citizens can actually access.
The same philosophy is visible in agriculture, where Ododo is attempting to transform Kogi’s enormous agricultural potential into a more deliberate food-security strategy. In 2024, the governor said more than ₦7 billion had been committed to tractors, agricultural equipment and inputs, while the administration also embarked on land clearing and cultivation to increase production of roots and grains.
By 2025, the government reported that more than 7,000 farmers in Kogi West had benefited from tractorisation, inputs, seedlings and labour support, covering nearly 600 hectares. It also reported 184 hectares of land restored through reforestation and 16 solar-powered boreholes for communities lacking reliable water access.
The importance of this lies beyond the immediate distribution of farm inputs: Ododo is attempting to connect agriculture with food security, rural infrastructure, climate resilience and local economic activity. In other words, he is seeking to make agriculture part of Kogi’s economic architecture rather than merely another government empowerment programme.
Infrastructure, too, has moved from the question of constructing a few highly visible projects to that of spreading connectivity across communities. Bello’s years were associated with major road projects and urban infrastructure, establishing an important physical foundation for the state. Ododo has complemented this with a stronger grassroots infrastructure orientation, including township roads and ongoing road interventions across the state’s senatorial districts.
The administration’s 2026 development agenda places road connectivity and infrastructure expansion alongside food security, healthcare and education as central priorities. The strategic significance is considerable. Kogi’s geographical position at the confluence of major routes means roads are not merely political projects; they determine the ability of farmers to move produce, students to reach schools, patients to reach hospitals and businesses to access markets.
A government that completes major roads while simultaneously improving rural and township connectivity is effectively extending the economic usefulness of the foundation inherited from the previous administration.
Yet the most striking area of consolidation may be fiscal management. Kogi entered the end of the Bello era with a domestic debt stock of about ₦121.81 billion at December 2023, according to DMO data. By March 2025, the DMO recorded Kogi’s domestic debt at approximately ₦20.38 billion. That represents a reduction of more than ₦100 billion in the reported domestic debt stock in roughly fifteen months.
The Kogi government has additionally stated that it cleared ₦98.8 billion in inherited liabilities within the first 15 months of Ododo’s administration. These figures should not be presented simplistically as though every naira of the reduction can automatically be credited to a single policy decision; debt restructuring, repayments, accounting treatment and changes in fiscal conditions matter.
But the direction of the official DMO data is unmistakable: Kogi’s domestic-debt position changed dramatically after Bello left office. That gives Ododo’s administration one of its strongest measurable claims to fiscal consolidation.
Workers’ welfare provides another important bridge between the two administrations. One of the most politically significant claims of the Bello years was the establishment of regular payment of state-level salaries and pensions. Ododo explicitly committed himself to maintaining that foundation, stating in June 2024 that his government would sustain the payment of 100 percent of state salaries and pensions.
The administration subsequently introduced a ₦72,500 minimum wage for Kogi workers, released promotion letters covering years of accumulated promotions, and pursued pension harmonisation and health insurance measures for pensioners. This is important because continuity in governance is not only about concrete structures.
A government can inherit a road, a hospital or a school, but it can also inherit an institutional expectation that workers should be paid regularly and that public servants should have a functioning career structure. Ododo’s effort to preserve and expand those gains gives the Bello legacy an important human dimension.
Ultimately, the strongest case for Ododo is that he has understood something that Nigerian politics too often forgets: development is cumulative. A state does not become transformed because a new governor arrives and renames projects, nor does every achievement disappear when an administration leaves office. Bello spent eight years constructing an institutional and physical base in Kogi; Ododo’s emerging contribution has been to consolidate that base, complete what remained unfinished and widen the circle of beneficiaries.
His 2026 budget of about ₦820.49 billion places food security, education, healthcare, infrastructure and human-capital development at the centre of the state’s development agenda. The fair assessment, therefore, is not that Ododo has simply copied Bello, nor that he has created Kogi from scratch. It is that he has chosen the more difficult path of continuity: taking an existing foundation, strengthening its fiscal base, extending its reach and adding new layers of development.
If Bello’s historic contribution was to lay a new foundation for modern Kogi, Ododo’s emerging legacy is the consolidation of that foundation into a broader development system. And in a country where political succession too often destroys institutional continuity, that may ultimately prove to be one of the most consequential achievements of the Ododo years.
• Dr Onoja writes from Lokoja
