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Tag: Bayelsa

  • Gunmen abduct Dickson’s sister in Bayelsa

    Gunmen abduct Dickson’s sister in Bayelsa

    Unidentified gunmen yesterday abducted Nancy Keme Dickson, the younger sister to Bayelsa State’s governor, Mr. Seriake Dickson.

    Nancy, 26, who was said to be the last child of the Dicksons was kidnapped at her shop located in Okaka Road, Yenagoa, the state capital.

    It was gathered that the gunmen who reportedly drove in an ash Lexus Jeep, trailed their target to her shop and whisked her away to an unknown place at about 2:50pm.

    It was unclear how the assailants managed to abduct their victim in broad daylight in a city guarded at strategic points by patrol vehicles of the state’s security outfit, Operation Door Akpo.

    Investigations revealed that shortly after the incident the police mounted stop and search operations on vehicles at different parts of the city.

    Most residents claimed that the incident was politically motivated.

    Dickson, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is facing a fierce reelection battle in the ongoing governorship poll in the state.

    Though the governor leads with over 33,000 votes, the rerun poll in Southern Ijaw and about 112 other polling units, which had been fixed for January 9, 2016, makes the contest competitive and tight.

    Bayelsa has been under the throes of kidnapping with persons close to governorship candidates abducted.  Among these are a cousin to the Governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Timipre Sylva; the centenarian mother of his running mate, Chief Wilberforce Igiri and the wife of an APC chieftain and former acting Governor, Nestor Binabo, were among persons abducted before the poll.

    The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Asinim But swat, confirmed the abduction of Nancy.

    He said: “On the 19 December, 2015, at about 1450hrs, four unknown gunmen in an ash coloured Lexus Jeep, trailed one Nancy Keme Dickinson, 26 yrs, to her shop at Okaka road, Yenagoa, and abducted her and her sales girl to an unknown destination.

    “The command immediately embarked on a Stop and Search/Cordon Operations in a bid to rescue the victims and apprehend the perpetrators. Efforts have been intensified to arrest the abductors. Investigation is ongoing.”

  • Supplementary poll holds Jan 9 in Bayelsa

    Supplementary poll holds Jan 9 in Bayelsa

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has fixed January 9 for the supplementary election in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

    The electoral body said it arrived at the date, following a meeting with leaders of parties and candidates in the December 5 governorship election.

    INEC, on December 7, cancelled the election in Southern Ijaw, following widespread violence, ballot box snatching and abduction of electoral officials.

    The meeting of parties’ stakeholders was held yesterday at INEC’s headquarters in Abuja.

    It was gathered that the meeting reaffirmed the commitment to the pact signed by candidates and their parties at a Peace Summit in Yenagoa, the state capital, on November 11, for free, fair and credible election in the state.

    It agreed to decentralise the distribution of sensitive election materials.

    The meeting was said to have called for the neutrality of security agencies and emphasised that the lead agency in the election should be the police.

    INEC, it was also learnt, was asked to ensure the functionality of the Smart Card Reader (SCR) to avoid hitches in the election.

  • EU,UNICEF battle open defecation in Bayelsa

    EU,UNICEF battle open defecation in Bayelsa

    The European Union (EU)  and the United Nations  Education Funds (UNICEF) are worried about entrenched habit of openly depositing faeces in water bodies and general environment by residents of Bayelsa State especially persons living in the rural and coastal areas.

    The international agencies in collaboration with the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agencies (RUWASSA) observed with dismay that unhygienic lifestyles associated with poor management of faeces account for constant outbreaks of water borne diseases like cholera in some parts of the state.

    In fact,  the rural communities in the riverine Ijaw communities are polluted.  They lack access to clean drinking water.  They only rely on water from the rivers around them,  which are mostly contaminated, for drinking and other domestic purposes.

    According to research,people from rural area in Bayelsa state  greatly practice open defeacation  in their rivers, bush, and water banks. This is the same river they  swim in,fetch water for drinking,  and do other household activities. Most of them engage in the practice for misguided reasons.

    One of the villagers from Kaiama in  Kolokuma/Opokuma Local Government Area of the  state, said he  he enjoys his open defecation system because according to him, the fish in the river feeds and grows large from his faces.

    He said:  ”I defaecate in this river. I drink from this river. My fish feeds largely on my faeces, and I kill my fish  and then eat the end product of my feaces”.

    In fact,  there is a great need to improve on the people’s hygienic behavior by providing them with a good sanitation.

    UNICEF defined sanitation as the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of feaces and human urine adding that inadequate sanitation is known to be a major cause of water- borne diseases  such as cholera, typhoid, diarrhea and ringworm.

    Following their discovery,  UNICEF in partnership with EU and RUWASSA  floated a programme in Bayelsa to discourage unhygienic behaviour and encourage adoption of  Ecological Sanitation (ECOSAN) known as an improved approach in sanitation in Nigeria.

    Ecological Sanitation (ECOSAN) is seen as any sanitation systems whose ultimate objective is to achieve practical sustainability and still maintain human dignity. So, the sponsors assembled artisans, wash committees and other stakeholders from different communities in the state in Kaiama to learn about ECOSAN and take their lessons to their various settlements.

    The trainees comprising officials of RUWASSA,  local government area wash units, community artisans, state local government area wash consultants and  sanitation officers were  empowered with knowledge and practice of ECOSAN.  It was a one week event.

    They were not only taught the theories of ECOSAN, they also helped the sponsors in constructing a durable ECOSAN pit latrines one each in Kalama, Ekwuari,  and Brass.  They learnt the skills of building environmentally friendly latrines.

    Speaking at the event, a UNICEF consultant, Mr. Patrick Ikor, said that ecological sanitation stores feaces and enriches the soil for farming.

    “Ecological Sanitation does not pollute rather it encourages  storage and usage of urine and feces materials  that can further be poured into agricultural development. The  Ecosan system involves buidling a water tight vault for storage of faeces  and building water tight chambers for urine storage.

    “This urine when it is filled up,  the jerry cans introduced to the chambers are removed  and kept for over one month  for most of the disease causing organisms to die off  and it is then safe for use  in our agricultural products.

    He advised the communities to forego their open defecation and embrace Ecosan latrines which he described as modern and hygienic.

    Explaining how the Ecosan latrines should be used,  he said: “The ecosan toilet should be used In such a way that the urine does not  get  mixed with the feaces,    I will advise that whenever they are using the vaults, they  should make sure to use toilet paper so that they  would avoid water going into the feaces chamber.

    “They should follow the guidelines of the  trainers on how to use those latrines because if  water and urine are being mixed together the results or the expected desired results will not be achieved. And at the moment when feaces are separated from urine, it dehydrates.   “Anal cleansing method should be tissue paper and not water because there are some people that use water. But in this approach we are asking the community users to learn how to use tissue paper even though they might have been using water for their anal cleansing”.

    He said the evacuation of the compost should be done after one year just as he advised users of the facility to ensure that the surrounding of the toilets are kept clean.

    In fact,  the construction of the modern latrines brought joy to the benefitting communities. The Amanonowei of the Ekwuari community His Highness, Bernard Izimbadi, thanked  EU and UNICEF for bringing such facility to their community.

    ”We did not have public toilet and we were so worried about it. We normally go to defecate inside river, and other places like inside bush and on our surrounding but now that the toilet has come through the help of EU/UNICEF,  we are happy.

    He went further to state that  the use of the toilets would bring some behavioural change like the  use of tissue papers. He advised the residents to adopt the new latrine.

    Another Resident said:  ”The toilet is very important to our community, and we need it especially now. Many of us we use to go to the waterside to defecate but since they  have come to do this thing for us we appreciate it”.

    One of the participants, Mr..Ezekiel Okobo,  who hails from  Brass commended the  EU and UNICEF coming to their rescue by erecting a toilet facility for them. The facility according to him will go a long way in making life easier for the community.

    “This  is a new concept but what we intended doing is to call the wash committees, the chiefs, the community leaders and then arrange a town hall meeting where we will  educate them and tell them what  this new approach is all about  so that they can easily adopt the concept for their community”, he said.

     

     

  • Fed Govt, Bayelsa battle unemployment

    Fed Govt, Bayelsa battle unemployment

    Bayelsa State has keyed into the Federal Government’s Graduate Intenship Scheme (GIS) to engage some of its army of jobless graduates. GIS is a programme designed by the Federal Government to train unemployed graduates on specific skills and get them prepared for public and private jobs in line with their acquired skills.

    The GIS assembled scores of selected graduates in Yenagoa for a three-day orientation programme to send them to government-owned institutions as interns. The state  Project Director, GIS,  who was represented by Mr.  John Obande, explained that interns are trained on particular skills for a year with monthly stipends from the government.

    He said  the prospective interns must undergo an orientation programme to enable them learn office etiquette before leaving for their various organisations

    He said: “It is an orientation for skill development training. Usually when we engage interns for a one year internship we train them twice. The orientation training is basically to equip them  on how to work in an organization office,  etiquette and what they are expected to find and how to handle their work or their job wherever they are posted to”,

    “We usually advise the interns to take their internship period very seriously regardless of the position you are working for because most of them n bayelsa here are in government ministry we encourage them to be serious with their work let them not take it as another avenue where government throws money  at them, they should take their internship program very seriously. “

    He advised the potential interns to take their one year period of gathering skills and experience seriously and not to be carried away by the monthly stipends paid them by the government. He said many graduates who finished the programme were able to set up their private businesses and engage other interns.

    “So, we encourage them to be serious with it. But if they don’t take it serious and think of just collecting the stipends then the purpose of the internship will be defeated. It may be little but if they are serious with it they will go higher.

    “On assessing the participant usually every firm is supposed to send us their quarterly report of the interns sent to them which we will analyze to see the performance of each participant. We also carry out on-the spot check.

    “We visit the firms to see how the interns are going about their work. We have been having training in Bayelsa and across the country but this time around it is more because what we have before now in Bayelsa is private engagement but Bayelsa State government just joined the GIS in what we call the state partnership.

    “They brought lot of their graduates into ministries and federal government departments. This is the first time we are having partnership with Bayelsa state government. But it is not the first time firms in Bayelsa are taking interns and we have been training them”,  he said.

    He said  the  interns were performing very well in private engagement but the state engagement was just barely two months old. He said when the funding for SURE-P stopped in December 2014, the office got a budget from the Ministry of Finance to execute the GIS programme for one year.

    Also the beneficiaries used the occasion to narrate their experiences in government institutions. One of them Pere Okolonwata said he was undergoing training on teaching adding that he was deployed to teach senior secondary schools in Community Secondary School Arena.

    “Well looking at the experience aaspect I have not had the opportunity to teach in school before but this is my first time and am beginning to appreciate teaching and teachers the more”,  he said.

    Also, Ayebaekipreye Samuel Douglas who was posted to the Community Secondary School Agudama  Biogbolo,  said the system should be reviewed to include other sectors instead of educational sector alone.

  • Kogi, Bayelsa elections

    Given that the governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states marked the first set under President Buhari and the new INEC chairman, their outcome was bound to attract considerable public interest. This is more so with the peaceful transition of the last general election. Before that election, fears were high that its outcome could dismember this country as sharp cleavages with religious and ethnic tinge dominated the language of political discourse.

    But that gloomy political atmosphere was to peter out when the election (though not without its shortfalls) came out largely successful culminating in the epochal defeat of a sitting president. The significance of that landmark event for democracy in Nigeria has since been chronicled by world leaders. With that success, expectations have been high that free and fair electoral conduct which had been the albatross of this country is beginning to take root.

    As both elections approached early in the life of the Buhari regime, public expectations were high that the mileage gained from the last general election would lead to a seamless outcome. Ironically, that expectation has failed to materialize as events from both polls have unmistakably shown. Both were declared inconclusiveness on account of electoral violence and sundry malpractices which prevented voting in some of the areas.

    In Kogi, elections did not hold in 91 polling units of 18 local government areas due to electoral infractions ranging from vandalism, snatching of electoral materials and outright violence. Though the APC was clearly leading the PDP with a margin of 41,253 votes, INEC declared the election inconclusive on the ground that the total number of registered voters in those polling units which stood at 49,953 was higher than that with which the APC led its rival. In its calculations, the remaining votes could still alter the pattern of electoral victory. It was for this reason which is in keeping with aspects of the electoral law that saw to the declaration of the election inconclusive.

    Opinions were sharply divided on the position of the electoral body. This is more so given that the universally accepted ratio of the actual votes cast vis-à-vis the total number of registered voters is put at about one third. What this implies is that the remaining votes may not substantially alter the winning pattern. And this came to pass when the final results of the re-run were put together. The APC had 6,885 of the votes while the PDP garnered 5,365. This figure is even less than one third of the remaining votes for which the election was declared inconclusive.

    The issue here is, had the election proceeded without hitches, the results would have been announced as a clear winner had emerged. By the same extrapolation, the complications and litigations that arose even within the APC fold, would have been staved off, the death of its governorship candidate, Abubakar Audu notwithstanding.

    Events of the botched elections in those polling units were to become the albatross of the Kogi election. INEC has been blamed for the pass in the Kogi polls on two fronts. It takes liability for observed shoddy preparations and for not declaring the result of the election when it was clear that the remaining votes cannot substantially turn the tide against the winning party.

    Even then, it would also appear the electoral body was playing safe given the penchant by our politicians to take advantage of any error of omission or commission to accuse it of skewing the process to the advantage of the ruling party. It is obvious it ordered the re-run to fulfill all righteousness. This point cannot also be discounted as there is precedence to back it up.

    But the violence and bad management of the election in Kogi is just a child’s play when paired with events of the governorship election in Bayelsa State. Reports spoke of sporadic shooting by armed militias in some areas especially in the southern Ijaw local government resulting in the killing of about five people. As a result, elections could not hold there. Curiously despite informed advice not to hold the election the following day because of the level of violence of the previous day, INEC went ahead with the election.

    The outcome of that error of judgment turned out disastrous. The electoral body had to cancel the election much later on the ground that it was substantially marred by violence, ballot snatching, intimidation and other irregularities. But that was after protests had erupted in the state capital accusing it of trying to manipulate the exercise taking advantage of the high level of insecurity in the area. How the electoral body and the security agencies came to the conclusion that free and fair elections were possible under that high level of insecurity in a state notorious for deadly militants, remains curious. But events have proved their decision futile.

    Not unexpectedly, that judgmental error has been largely responsible for the recrimination going on between the APC and the PDP with each seemingly claiming victory. The PDP said, having won in six out of the seven local governments where results have been declared, it has satisfied the requirements for electoral victory. The APC on its own says it has also obtained 25 per cent of the votes in two thirds of the local governments and wants the results of southern Ijaw which it expects to turn the tide in its favour to be declared.

    What the position of the APC implies is that if the result of the southern Ijaw council was declared, it would have garnered substantial votes to turn electoral victory in its favour. We shall demonstrate the possibility of this claim by critically appraising the pattern of votes scored by the parties in the seven local governments that have been so far declared.

    In Brass, APC had 21,755 votes against 6,516 by the PDP while in Sagbama PDP had 28,934 as against 5,382 by the APC.  In Yenegoa, PDP scored 24,258 while the APC had 14,563. These three local governments recorded the highest number of votes in the election. In the remaining four local governments, the margin was narrow even as the PDP led in all of them.

    But the wide margin of votes in Brass and Sagbama can be understood. The APC candidate hails from Brass while that of PDP is from Sagbama. Going by the votes in the two local governments of the candidates, whereas the PDP got nearly one third of the votes in Brass, the APC could not secure that in Sagbama.

    If this statistics does not clearly underscore the relative strengths of the parties, the case of Yenagoa where the cumulative votes of the two parties stood at 39,821 despite its voting strength of 132,025 says it all. The total score of the two parties represents barely one third of the total number of registered voters.

    Southern Ijaw which has a voting strength of 120,827 comes second after Yenagoa.  With barely one third of the total voting strength taking part in the Yenagoa poll and the margin of votes recorded in the other local governments, it stands to be imagined the kind of difference the southern Ijaw poll will make in the overall calculations of the final results. It will be a huge surprise if it turns the tide of the election outcome.

    So it is not just a matter of bandying claims to electoral victory. The facts on the ground speak for themselves. INEC should move fast and set a new date for election to be held in southern Ijaw after adequate security to guarantee free and fair polls have been put in place.

    Beyond these, INEC has disappointed the nation in its handling of the two elections. If it could perform so abysmally in two isolated elections, we shudder at what the situation will turn out during general elections. But the role of security agencies during elections and the desperation of politicians to win at all costs have become serious issues that will make or mar our attempts to institutionalize democracy on these shores.

  • APC: Army saved Bayelsa from PDP’s thugs

    The leadership of Bayelsa State All Progressives Congress (APC), yesterday, said the presence of soldiers prevented thugs, allegedly hired by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), from overrunning the state during the governorship election.

    The party hailed the Army for indicting Governor Seriake Dickson for his alleged roles in the crisis in Southern Ijaw.

    A statement at the weekend in Yenagoa, the state capital, by Director of Media and Publicity of the Sylva/Igiri Campaign Organisation (SICO), Chief Nathan Egba, said the Army’s report had vindicated the APC.

    The statement said APC had expressed concerns about the alleged complicity of the PDP and its candidate, Dickson, in the violence and irregularities in the December 5 and 6 governorship election.

    It said the Army’s report was unbiased because it reflected how executive recklessness and PDP’s alleged desperation turned a simple civil process into a war.

    The statement said: “We wish to assure all that, unlike Governor Dickson and the PDP, we will continue to remain peaceful, law-abiding, even as we pursue the actualisation of our mandate with the announcement of the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area’s results.

    “We, in the Sylva-Igiri Campaign Organisation, had hoped Governor Dickson would have called himself to order and disallowed things to escalate to the point where the military too was forced to respond.

  • Bayelsa gangsters and leaders

    No question about it: what transpired during the Bayelsa State governorship election penultimate weekend was a show of shame and failure of leadership. The poll witnessed a brazen display of the reprehensible mentality in Nigerian politics that electoral outcomes shouldn’t simply be left to informed and intelligent voters to freely decide, but should rather be modulated by political actors who test one another’s will in superior use of force as well as intimidation of opposing voters and, indeed, the election management body. And that is not counting the generous dose of all other imaginable manners of subterfuge thrown in the mix. For a state that is relatively less expansive in administrative scale, considering that it has just eight local government areas (Kano has 44) – although many of the communities are riverine and estuarine, hence very difficult to access, it was shameful that the governorship election ended up inconclusive largely because of the impunity of the political leaders and their supporters alike.

    Militancy is not alien to the south-south zone where Bayelsa State is located, and so, no reasonable person foreclosed the likelihood that there would be some measure violence in the course of the election. But what played out penultimate weekend overshot all reasonable projections. Sheer violence and other electoral malpractices, including ballot box snatching, intimidation of voters and polling officials, characterised the December 5 election in many of the local government areas, especially the riverine terrains. At the Southern Ijaw council area, election officials were barricaded in by militants at the council office and prevented from deploying for the election, compelling the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reschedule the poll in that area to Sunday, December 6. But when the election eventually held, the brigandage was fiercer; it was so bad that militant supporters were reported to have held polling officials hostage. The electoral commission subsequently cancelled the poll in the entire local government area, thereby making the governorship election inconclusive.

    Violence and poll cancellation: those were the hallmarks of the Bayelsa election – just like it has been in many other areas across this country. The two leading political parties – the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – were the major culprits in Bayelsa, as they maximally exerted their capacity for mutual intimidation during the poll. If one may play the devil’s advocate, the high level of desperation by these parties was, perhaps, not too far fetched: Bayelsa is the home state of former President Goodluck Jonathan, who lost power in the 2015 general election as PDP’s candidate, and it would seem a matter of existential pride for the party to hold on to the state and avert the ultimate humiliation by the APC. For the APC, on the other hand, winning Bayelsa State would rank next to taking over power at the presidency in conclusively proving the party’s supremacy over the PDP.

    Contestation for political supremacy is fine if it is done within the universal bounds of civility and the voter’s indivisible right to exercise free choice – which is the essence of democracy. And that free choice ought to be informed and guided by the voter’s keen awareness of the policies and programmes being put on offer by the political parties and their candidates. In Bayelsa however, as has been typical of the Nigerian political space, the parties and their candidates did anything but engage in a decent contest of ideas and programmes to convince the voters. The comportment of the political actors was more of seeking to compel an outcome through the use of force and other malpractices. The two major parties, in particular, exerted themselves in a mutual test of capacity for intimidation and taking umbrage. Even though the governorship candidates signed a peace accord before the election, there was little evidence that they took the accord seriously, and they evidently did very little to rein in those militants – their supporters – who disrupted the balloting in some areas.

    The PDP candidate, Seriake Dickson, who is seeking re-election as Governor, stood out as using his official position to mobilise mob sentiment at different stages of the balloting process. It was ironic seeing the chief security officer of a state carry on with the gung-ho of a lynch mob leader. The tendency, however, is not peculiar to Dickson: there have been other state governors who, in the thick of past elections, resorted to verbal lynching of the electoral commission, their political opponents and other stakeholders in election administration such as the security agencies, just to gain whatever advantage they thought was possible in the process. In Bayelsa State, there were mutual calls by the political parties for the candidate of the other party to be disqualified by the electoral commission. But such advocates need to know that the provisions of the law – for instance, Section 31 (1) of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended – do not give the commission the muscle to act as canvassed. By the way, it was for the same reason that INEC could do nothing about the unwilling candidature of James Faleke when the APC nominated him as Deputy to Mohammed Bello for the recent Kogi State supplementary election.

    I have always wondered why political emotions are so raw and unbridled in our own electoral jurisdiction. Electoral contests in many other climes do not entail the level of desperation and bile that we see in this country. I know this because I have had the privilege to observe elections in a good number of other countries that space would not allow me to elaborate upon here.  It’s not as if all the ills of the Bayelsa election were from the political class alone. Many observers reported that polling units opened late in many areas, and INEC has the blame for the disfunctionality of its deployment system. But I also happen to know that there is a sense in which even this challenge is connected with the uncivil temperament of the political actors. For, instance, the electoral commission typically cascades its deployment of personnel and materials from the state headquarters to the polling units for any election, with security agents providing protection all the way. Where security agents were not promptly available to provide that protection, deployment would have to stall because risks could not be taken in view of the impunity that characterised the electoral environment. Bayelsa is also peculiar because of the predominantly riverine terrain, much of which is not easily accessible. But let’s be clear: none of these frees INEC from blame for the disfunctionality of its logistics.

    Observers also reported deviations from regulations for accreditation in a few polling units, such that some polling officials allowed voters whose Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) were not authenticated by the Smart Card Readers to proceed with the balloting process contrary to the commission’s process design. And there were reports that security agents looked the other way in some places where militant supporters disrupted the voting process. For a singular operation executed by tens of thousands of hands, it is a tough call to expect the electoral commission to guarantee full compliance with the regulations by every single staff. In ideal situations, political parties would assist the electoral commission with field oversight of the voting process if they weren’t so given to impunity.

  • PDP claims APC flooded Bayelsa with fake dollars for election

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state alleged yesterday that fake dollars estimated to be worth N2 billion are now in circulation in Bayelsa.

    The PDP said the printing and circulation of the said notes have “vindicated its earlier alarm raised prior to the conduct of the election of the plan of the APC to rig the election and as well induce voters with fake currencies.”

    It said  N2 billion of the fake currencies “are already in circulation, while they are still planning to print more for the re-run election in Southern Ijaw local government area of the state.

    “The currencies, especially the N1,000, are having the same serial numbers while the quality of the paper used in printing is not the same with the original currencies.”

    The Director of Publicity, Restoration Campaign Organisation, Mr. Jonathan Obuebite, who signed the statement asked the relevant agencies to “step up action by ensuring the mop up of the liquidity of fake notes in circulation.”

    He condemned “the desperation, the hook and crook disposition of the APC and its governorship candidate, whose plan to take over governance in Bayelsa is anchored on deceit, complete lies and violence, stressing that, they have continued prove and from their antecedents that, they do not mean well for the people.”

  • Bayelsa guber candidates demand redeployment of DIG

    Some  governorship candidates in Bayelsa State want the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), Hassimu Argungu, and the state Commissioner of Police, Nasiru Oki, redeployed ahead of the yet to be fixed concluding segment of the election.

    The  United Governorship Forum for Credible Elections (UGFCE), as the group styles itself, accused the duo of supporting the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the controversial Southern Ijaw local government election.

    The position of the forum was contained in a communiqué read by its leader, Mr. William Berezi, after a meeting in Yenagoa.

    The group condemned the roles of some officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Police and Army.

    According to the group, institutions of the federal government displayed bias for the APC.

    The forum pointed out that there was no guarantee that the rescheduled elections would not be marred by similar violence adding that neutral persons should be posted to supervise the election.

    It further called on the military high command to withdraw all soldiers deployed to provide security in Southern Ijaw.

    It said that all the electoral materials used in the botched Southern Ijaw election should be jettisoned and new materials be deployed for the fresh poll.

    “We know for a fact that some of the hijacked materials are still in the hands of APC thugs and if not changed, those same materials would be used to rig the rescheduled election,” it said.

     

  • Roots of Bayelsa’s dilemma

    Roots of Bayelsa’s dilemma

    As Nigerians await the election in Southern Ijaw Local Government, which will determine the final result of the touchy governorship poll in Bayelsa State, Associate Editor, Sam Egburonu, who monitored it at close quarters last Saturday, reports on the root causes of the Bayelsa dilemma

    Following widespread violence in the December 6, 2015 governorship election in Bayelsa State, which left about eight people dead and several others injured, and the resultant postponement of the election in the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the tension in the South-South state has remained very high.

    Although some observers predicted that the poll would be violent, only very few imagined it would assume the dimension it did. The popular prediction was that the security cordon around the restive Niger Delta state would contain the excesses of militant youths.

    But the security forces were rather helpless or overwhelmed in some areas, especially in the riverine communities.

    First signs that the massive security presence in the state would not be able to contain the violence were confirmed in the early morning hours that Saturday, when some gun-toting hooligans, identified only as political thugs, shot four people dead in Oporoma, the headquarters of Southern Ijaw Local Government Area.

    To compound the sense of insecurity that day, the people were inundated with conflicting reports of the actual perpetrators of the violence. While the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) accused the major opposition, All Progressives Congress (APC), of hijacking ballot boxes under the supervision of the Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Heineken Lokpobiri, his APC alleged that the rampaging youths that invaded his country home were sponsored by the PDP.

    There were similar buck-passing and conflicting reports from several wards in places like Ekeremor Town, Ekeremor Local Government Area, in Opume Town, where 10 persons made attempts to hijack voting materials but were repelled by the police and at Kolokuma/Opokuma, where hoodlums attacked voters, and prevented them from accessing polling units.

    In the Ogbolomabiri area of Nembe Town in Nembe Local Government Area, and in Sagbama, the situation was the same as some political thugs attacked a party agent and others.

    While the various political parties that participated in the election agreed on the fact that there was red hot violence, what they disagreed on was the source of the violence. For example, the Director, Media and Publicity of the Sylva/Igiri Campaign Organisation, Nathan Egba, was quoted as alleging that in Oporoma, two ex-militants, who he said were known PDP members, led armed thugs to the community and killed some APC members.

    But Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, said that Saturday that it was APC thugs that were in the offensive when he said, “My party and I have called for peace. APC is not preparing for election but war. They have armed their thugs with police and military uniforms, and in some cases, are protected by security agents themselves. What is currently going on is mayhem,” he said. He also reportedly blamed both the Ekeremor and Oporoma attacks on APC.

    “We are taking stock of all these and we hope and expect that appropriate legal actions will be taken against these notorious criminals who are unleashing terror and violence on fellow citizens, all in the name of politics. The security agents know who they are. The security agents arrived when the mayhem were carried out,” the governor said.

    He added: “People have been attacked in Twon Brass, in two wards there. People who are supporters of our party are held hostage, as I speak to you. Supporters have been attacked and injured in Orwoma. A number of them have sustained life-threatening injuries. That terrible attack is going on, even as we speak. The state chairman of the party is hiding in police custody in Twon Brass. He cannot vote. The condition there is not one that promotes free and fair democratic exercise and franchise for our people.”

    Roots of the intrigues

    Keen observers of the politics of Bayelsa State say what played out on Saturday, December 6, 2015 is a build-up of the intricacies of Bayelsa, described as the hub of Ijaw nation.

    Even before the gubernatorial election, many agreed that it would mark the first time a proper election would hold in the state since 1999. According to Mr. Henry Paniebi, “before now, this state was 100 percent PDP, so during elections, everybody would have known the result before casting the votes. But we all knew before this election that it would not be business as usual, more so when the leading political parties, the PDP and the APC, fielded political rivals in the persons of Dickson and Sylva respectively. That being the case, we expected the desperation and we knew what the two candidates were capable of doing.

    “We knew that a combination of factors, like the influence of former President Goodluck Jonathan, our sentiment over politics of the centre, the death of former governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, use of militant youths by the two leading candidates and of course huge war chest, will come to play. So, we are not surprised at what happened,” he said.

    Dr. Israel Ibinabo also told The Nation, “You cannot distinguish between the influence of Jonathan and that of his wife or the movement built around the streetwise influence of the former governor, Governor-General, the late Alamieyeiseigha. In Yenegoa here, people believe only a combination of these forces would give Dickson an edge. The way our people think here, the sentiment already built around the support of these people is even more potent than the power of incumbency. This is not to deny the love a common Bayelsan has for former Governor Sylva, who we feel was badly treated by PDP in spite of his genuine efforts to make tangible impact.”

    Investigation conducted in Yenagoa during the elections confirmed that the debate on the need to align with the politics of the centre aided the opposition APC in many parts of the state. It would be recalled that this debate has gained roots in Bayelsa State since the late Chief Melford Okilo, the founder of the National Solidarity Movement (NSM) collapsed his party into the PDP, thus making way for the emergence of former governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. Since then, the state had remained a PDP state, culminating in the emergence of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

    While Sylva-led APC worked hard to nurture the old sentiment of politics of the centre, the Dickson-led PDP argued that Ijaws would not abandon PDP, a party that produced former President Jonathan after benefitting so much from it as that would amount to ingratitude. Insiders said the electioneering campaign for the December 6 election became particularly emotive because of the way their son, Jonathan, suddenly lost the Presidency on March 28. “Some of us saw the election as a scheme to displace another of our son by a political party that denied us of the presidency,” said Madam Juliet Agbo.

    We gathered that by the time former governor Alamieyeseigha died, shortly before the election, PDP supporters became even more emotional.

    Ex-militant leader, Asari- Dokubo captured this feeling when he told media men before the election, “For me, we should stand and make sure opposition does not take Bayelsa. It goes beyond Dickson, just like the Presidency goes beyond Jonathan, it is about us. Ibos stood by Jonathan, so we should not do anything that would make them feel we have betrayed them. The consequences of an APC victory would be far reaching. All the people who stood by us have their eyes on Bayelsa; they are watching us.  The election is going to be a litmus test of Ijaw people’s perseverance and sincerity. For me, it is a duty on all Ijaw people to make sure that whatever it takes by any means necessary, APC does not raise its voice in Bayelsa State,” he said.

    These deep seated feelings, over dependence on government and the overt involvement of militants in the politics of the state accounted for not only the intrigues and name calling that trailed the electioneering campaigns but also the violence that led to the suspension of the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area.

    It would be recalled that before the D-day, reports of defections and cross-carpeting into the All Progressives Congress and Peoples Democratic Party became a daily affair. Beyond the defections, however, it was observed that political actors freely engaged in name calling, a development that is allegedly informed by disagreements over use of government resources.

    For example, reacting to some criticisms of non performance against his government by BPCA, Governor Dickson had said through his spokesman, Daniel Iworiso, Dickson that “What is playing out is an offshoot of the governor’s long-running battle with this class of politicians on the proper utilization of state resources to serve the people and never to serve the greed of the few. Their selfish conception of politics and attitude in government is what had retarded development in the state since the era of the late statesman, Chief Melford Okilo.

    “Bayelsans can never exchange the present peace and tranquility in the state as well as the unprecedented level of development for the chaos and unmitigated rent culture of the past. All they want is free access to money, which will enable them to live big at the expense of development and this is the point of departure between them and Governor Dickson”.

    Countering this accusation that the defectors left the party for personal reasons and self aggrandizement, one of the leaders of the group then said they decided to join the APC because the PDP had become an opposition party at the federal level.

    He said, “Don’t forget that in this part of the country, we have always aligned with the federal government because of our limitations. We are a minority living on wealth but wallowing in squalor, and you cannot extrapolate yourself too far or too long from the power that controls the system if you want to make progress.

    “This is the philosophy that has been right from the time of Chief Harold Dapaprieye, the then leader of the Ijaw, who represented them at the London Constitutional Conference of 1958.

    “Why are some people suddenly thinking that we must still be in the PDP? That party went into an election with our own son even as a sitting president and lost. Politics is about conceding and taking. So why can’t we concede and be in the majority so that we can benefit,” he asked.

    The complexity of the politics of Bayelsa today may be seen from the report that the same leader of the group, who wrote off PDP had gone back to the party before the election.

    Bayelsa Dilemma

    Given this complexity, built on emotion and history, many say the postponed governorship election in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area would not only determine the next occupant of the Government House in Yenegoa but the future political direction of the entire Ijaw nation. Many are asking if the people will continue to allow emotion to guide their political path or resolve to follow new realities. So, for the state and the country, the stake is very high, as insiders and observers alike say the security agents must prepare to do much more than they did in December 6, especially because both PDP and APC are claiming that Southern Ijaw Local Government Area is their strongholds.