The Ijaw Renaissance Movement (IRM) has lambasted Bayelsa State Governor Douye Diri and his administration for allegedly wasting billions of the state’s money sponsoring a campaign of calumny against a former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva.
The group in a statement signed yesterday by its spokesperson, Monovie Paul, said the pattern and style of the campaign were designed to create bad blood between Sylva and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as well as other key officials of the Presidency.
Paul recalled that during the campaign ahead of the Bayelsa governorship election, Diri and his cohorts bankrolled a number of sinister propaganda to pit Sylva against some key presidential officials.
“But after the election, knowing that Sylva, who is the candidate of the APC, has a good case at the tribunal against Governor Diri, they have started again to see whether they can truncate the relationship between Sylva and President Tinubu,” Paul alleged.
He said the latest of such propaganda was their attempt to attribute an article written by a scholar, John Idumange, against the economic policies of President Tinubu, to Sylva.
He said: “John Idumange, who is neither a member of the APC nor a spokesperson for Sylva, acting on his own in 2023, wrote a piece against the economic policies of Tinubu. But just recently, Diri and his cohorts rehashed the same article and attributed it to Sylva.
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“Such mischievous act has an underlining sinister motive of creating non-existing enmity between Sylva and the Presidency. It is orchestrated out of desperation by Diri to curry presidential favour and subtly seek support to manoeuver justice.”
Paul said such desperation had collapsed like a pack of cards, noting that Sylva had never at any time criticised any aspect of Tinubu’s economic policies.
He said: “In any case, who did Diri work for during the election? It is on record that Diri and his bunch of prosperity politicians did not support a Southern Presidency. He was among the Southern governors, who even betrayed a Southern presidential aspirant in his party, who was then the Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike.
“Governor Diri wanted another northerner in the person of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to take over power after former President Muhammadu Buhari. Even when Wike and his group of integrity governors in PDP resisted another northern presidency, Diri was bankrolling Atiku to take over power.
“Sylva galvanised and mobilised the people of the state to vote for Tinubu. Despite all efforts of Diri to truncate Tinubu’s victory, our president still won at the polls. Now the same Diri is trying to cut a deal with same Presidency he never supported. We have it on good authority that Diri is among the governors still supporting Atiku ahead of the 2027 election.”
Paul called on Diri to stop wasting Bayelsa resources.
He said he should allow justice to take its course, adding that deploying the state funds under any guise to disrupt justice would not work.
