By Tiete Abel
Every reader of the newspapers and the various online platforms in Nigeria will readily come to one inevitable conclusion that there is a media mob that is raging against the Governor of Bayelsa State, Henry Seriake Dickson as a fall out of the November 16, gubernatorial election in the state. Many of the key players in the frenzied mob action are blaming the return of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the election, Chief David Lyon, on Dickson’s purported feud with former President Goodluck Jonathan. This category of persons who have besieged the media space has carried on with this rather depressing and diversionary story line without pausing for a second to take a critical look at the major events that preceded and shaped the primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party on September 3.
It is a fact beyond contestation that former President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor Dickson are (or should have been) the two biggest critical stakeholders in the Bayelsa PDP. It was the general expectation that these two leaders, one a former president who governed the country under the platform of the PDP, and the other, a sitting second term governor, have a responsibility to jointly supervise the process for the emergence of a generally acceptable candidate for the PDP to retain its hold on political power in Bayelsa. However, for some reasons, the two leaders, Jonathan and Dickson, couldn’t agree on that candidate for the PDP due to a complex twist of factors.
While Jonathan and his political family opted to support former managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, Chief Timi Alaibe, Governor Dickson and his supporters under the aegis of the PDP Restoration Team went for the senator representing Bayelsa Central, Senator Douye Diri who eventually won the hard-fought primary held at the Bayelsa State Cultural Centre, Yenagoa.
Prior to the primaries, the two leaders decided that the PDP leadership should allow all aspirants to test their popularity at the primaries after which the aftermath would be collectively managed preparatory to the gubernatorial election. Sadly, that did not happen.
It is in the light of this that it has become pertinent to address the deliberate distortion on the face of facts that the PDP lost election in Bayelsa because Dickson was disobedient or rude to former President Jonathan. Nothing can be farther from the truth than this wild barefaced rag of a lie that was desperately sold to the unsuspecting public to add legitimacy to the charade called election in Bayelsa. In clear terms: Neither was the governor disrespectful of the former president nor was there a free, fair and credible election that should produce a governor-elect in Bayelsa.
As a witness to the major events in Bayelsa in the days leading to the election on November 16, I can confidently say that what happened in Bayelsa was an interplay of brigandage and state-sponsored violence which was crafted around Jonathan’s purported conflict with Dickson all in the desperate pursuit of plot to add legitimacy to a putrid electoral robbery that would haunt all men of good conscience in the society for years.
Read Also: Reps to probe security breaches in Kogi, Bayelsa polls
The point to note is that Jonathan made what he knew was an impossible offer to Dickson which he couldn’t accept. Precisely, Jonathan wanted Dickson to support Alaibe who defected from the PDP to join forces with Chief Timipre Sylva and other elements in the APC against him in his fierce re-election bid in 2015. The governor who was not unaware of the massive implication of supporting Alaibe against member of his political family, made it clear that it was unjust and unfair for political leaders to arrive at a choice of Alaibe without his input and attempt foist him on the party.
It is also important at this point to highlight the fact that democracy in Bayelsa cannot be twisted to have the exclusive face of savagery and primitive communalism. Democracy is not the system of government where godfathers and human gods rule by decrees and proclamations. Where there is a political disagreement in a democracy, such disputes are naturally resolved through the ballot.
This was exactly the case during the primaries of the PDP in Bayelsa which produced Senator Diri as the candidate of the party. I can still recall clearly that the former president and Dickson drove in a convoy to commence voting in the primaries conducted by the governor of Taraba State, Darius Ishaku, a former minister under Jonathan who is known to be fiercely loyal to him, at the Bayelsa State Cultural Centre, Yenagoa.
Clips of the election which was televised live on AIT shows Jonathan casting the first vote of the primaries for the candidates to commence the fierce contest. Curiously, shortly after the results of the election were announced, Alaibe headed for the court to challenge it while Jonathan refused to congratulate Diri who was returned as the winner in the election conducted by a governor many refer to as his political son, Darius Ishaku. On his part, Jonathan kept quiet and said nothing about the primaries until the brutal siege on the electoral process and its ethos on November 16.
It is indeed curious that Jonathan who was celebrated for conceding defeat in the 2015 Presidential election refused to congratulate Diri. This singular action of the former president is indeed a puzzle and a ruthless negation of the reputation for which he has become associated as a pillar of democracy ever since he conceded defeat to President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC.
Nevertheless, it is important to assert here that the purported disagreement between Dickson and Jonathan (if it ever existed) was not the reason behind the INEC’s announcement of curious electoral figures that returned Chief David Lyon of the APC as the winner of the Bayelsa poll. I also find it important to add that as a father figure and leader, Jonathan did not condemn the massacre of innocent PDP members in Nembe three days to the election. What manner of bitterness and anger foisted such a mindset on him? His conduct before and after the election showed clearly that something was amiss. Jonathan later received the governors and leaders of the APC.
Nigerians should not lose sight of the fact that the alignment of forces against the democratic freedom of the Bayelsa people was out for a set objective which no candidate could have stopped.
Again, many who have attacked the governor for purportedly imposing a running mate on Senator Diri missed a vital point that it is the standard practice for the candidate to pick his running mate with necessary advice and guidance from the party leadership.
As a candidate in 2015, Dickson rejected the move to foist Hon Waripamowei Dudafa, the then Special Adviser to President Jonathan on Domestic Matters, on him as running mate. Instead he provoked the rage of the powers-that-be when he opted for Rear Admiral Gboribiogha John Jonah, as running mate. His decision triggered a chain of reactions which heightened with the disappearance of his name from the INEC list of candidates. Luckily for him, it was restored by Justice Olotu of the Federal High Court who gave an order setting aside the removal of his name as the candidate of the PDP in the election. By that singular judicial action, Olotu was tagged a corrupt judge and sacked from the nation’s judiciary. This illustration is necessitated by the need to emphasize that the candidate of a political party in an election has the powers to pick his running mate with the advice of party leaders!
In conclusion, to say that the PDP lost a gubernatorial election in Bayelsa is an aberration. The party did not lose an election. The orgy of violence before and during the election, the killings in Nembe, the deployment of soldiers and heavy military equipment, and soldiers in Ogbia, the indiscriminate arrest of PDP leaders in the area, the shootings in Southern Ijaw, and parts of Yenagoa among others show clearly that a coalition of desperate forces led by the federal government despoiled the ethos of democracy to impose an APC victory on the state.
I think we should pause to ask pertinent questions in defence of our democracy. This attempt to sell a story line to add legitimacy to the rape of democracy in Bayelsa should be condemned in totality. A morality that condemns the killing of the PDP woman leader who was burnt to death in Kogi, should also condemn the murder of an innocent OB Van Driver of Radio Bayelsa who was shot to death in Nembe! To condemn the violence in Kogi and make a surreptitious move to legitimize a worse sacrilege in Bayelsa is a sin against democracy which this nation should condemn.
- Abel wrote from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
Leave a Reply