A former Governor of Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva, on Wednesday alleged that the incumbent Governor, Seriake Dickson, was hatching a plot to begin a smear campaign against the Presidency in the state.
Sylva in a statement signed by his Media Assistant, Julius Bokoru, said the aim of the campaign was to pit him against some powerful persons at the Presidency.
But Dickson in a swift reaction described Sylva as an unpopular and desperate politician, whose conscience remained his greatest threat.
Bokoru said Dickson’s method was sponsoring with state resources, journalists in the mainstream media and content providers on the social media to write damning stories against some key figures at the Presidency.
He named Abba Kyari, the Chief of Staff to the President, as a particular target in the fake news campaign adding that the mercenaries responsible for the campaign would leave artificial traces linking the stories to Sylva.
Bokoru said: “What is most surprising here is not the fact that Dickson can cook up a plot as treacherous as this, because when it comes to demonic desperation and sheer cynicism, he has lost the element of surprise.
“But it is the fact that despite being at the twilight of his failed governorship, Dickson still deludes himself with the notion that clutching on to attempts to discredit Sylva can either divert public attention from his years of misrule or burnish up his damaged integrity.
“The Dickson government has been built on layers of empty propaganda that he has sustained with robotic consistency. His habitually high-sounding claims and promises have not produced tangible results to uplift the people he has impoverished for close to eight years”.
Bokoru said having pursued efforts to discredit Sylva since assuming office in February 2012, to no avail, Dickson had settled for a dangerous fake news campaign, give himself a soft-landing.
He said: “Unknown to Dickson, what the people of Bayelsa State need are imaginative economic strategies and tangible deliverables, not glib publicity stunts.
“At the national level, Sylva unmistakably and unequivocally emphasises that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is one he, along with other patriots, helped install in 2015.
“He is all too enthusiastic to repeat this gesture come this February. Sylva is not in the business of unhelpful, petty rivalries in this same government, as the darkest side of Dickson’s generally dark imagination is dreaming to manufacture.
“It is incomprehensible that a man who refused to pay salaries even after the Buhari government’s consistency in allocations, a man who deliberately subjected Bayelsans to undue, undeserved difficulty through this Yuletide, would spend hundreds of millions of naira on terribly scripted propaganda, petty mudslinging, and building castles in the air.
“The public should discountenance the shenanigans of Dickson and his lowly government. While he is exhausting state treasury sparring with the shadow of Sylva, the state has degraded infrastructurally and economically, and violence, both spontaneous and state-inspired, is at the highest ever levels”.
But Dickson said in a statement by his Special Adviser, Media Relations, Mr. FIdelis Soriwei, that Sylva cut the gnawing image of a troubled man screaming and fleeing at the sight of nobody.
Soriwei said that Dickson was too involved and indeed occupied with the execution of the mandate the Bayelsa people gave to him, to be distracted by the hallucinations of a politician whose lifeline in politics was the state of the mood of his political masters.
He said that it was queer and absurd that Sylva did not point to any particular story in the media but was only spewing out fake news that a report would be released to the public soon.
He challenged Sylva to come clean on any particular sin he might have committed against the Chief of Staff, who had no issue whatsoever with Dickson.
He said: “This type of report falls short of the standard of a story that should command a place in our respected media space. Somebody of the exalted status of a former Governor is crying wolf where there is none and hallucinating that Governor reputed to be his political nemesis is after him.
“The point to note is that the Governor is too busy with the execution of the mandate given to him by Bayelsans in place of Sylva to be bothered by anticipated clashes between Sylva and the President’s Chief òf Staff.
“This comic claim by Sylva and his minion is a classic example of the wicked on flight at the sight of nobody. The fact is that Sylva is so scared and intimidated by the shadow of Dickson, that his nightmares about him occur in the day time.
“We hope Sylva is not having sleepless night over the possibility of yet another “leaked audio” in this era of “double speak and doubt thoughts.”
Soriwei stressed that while Dickson worked hard to put his name on all the life changing, big ticket developmental projects in Bayelsa, Sylva would be remembered for the descent to lawlessness, the slaughter of the innocent encapsulated in his killing machine, Famutangbe.
“Sylva’s regime is one bitter story of the locust, pain, misery, waste and misrule in Bayelsa . His rejection by the Bayelsa people only showed the decision of the people to reject stagnation and sterility in governance.”