Mental Health Of PDP’s Kogi Governorship Candidate Throws State Into Confusion.

Idris Wada

An expose by a youth group in Kogi State that the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in tomorrow’s governorship election has a questionable mental status has triggered worries in the state about possible violation of Section 182 (2) a & b of the 1999 Constitution.

The expose by the Kogi Youth Liberation Movement in one of the national dailies contained medical records which detailed the mental history of PDP’s candidate, Idris Wada.  It lists schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusion as some of the conditions the governorship candidate was diagnosed with over three decades ago.

The documents, which confirm that Mr. Wada was treated for these mental conditions at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, also have some pages of writings by Wada himself in which he referred to one Dr. Akindele and his desire to leave the treatment facility without “fanfare”.

A citizen of Kogi who did not want to be mentioned because of the sensitivity of the matter said as follows: “The manner in which Wada, then 25 years old, discharged himself against medical advice puts a lie to the series of attempts now been made to convince the people of Kogi state that the man seeking to rule them has now been fully healed of the affliction that left him loitering the premises of a hotel in the wee hours of the morning.”

The source, who is from Kogi West Senatorial District, said the unintelligible scribbles which the medical report attributed to Wada show the severity of the conditions which the PDP aspirant suffered in 1976. “I shiver anytime I think of the prospect of similar scribbles being made on the official letterhead paper of Kogi State under the seal of the governor. You know this thing that the Yoruba-speaking people of Kogi State say that no one can completely cure insanity. There is no way that it will not affect the quality of decisions and policies that this man will make if the people make the mistake of electing him as governor.”

He also said, “A man who thought people around him are wild animals or that his friends were out to get him…he could just snap under the pressure that comes with the job of being a governor. That could put Kogi State on the path to a constitutional crisis.”

Another source within Wada’s camp made desperate efforts to stop the PDP candidate’s mental history from becoming public knowledge. “You can see that when the issue of Idris (Wada)’s mental history become public knowledge, the practical thing they did was to say that he is now well. It was simply not possible to dispute those medical records. Even some (people) within his camp are worried about the prospect of having a boss who could flip any day.”