The battle for the soul of Bayelsa State has become intense and intriguing among three top contenders as the state’s governorship poll holds on Saturday, November 11, 2023, SIMON UTEBOR writes.
THE people of the oil-rich Bayelsa State, the centre of gravity of the Ijaw nation and a centrifugal force in the Niger Delta, are on the march again to elect a new governor on Saturday, November 11, 2023. Without any iota of doubt, the stakes are high and the political atmosphere is tense as palpable fear and trepidation fill the air.
Governor Douye Diri, the current occupant of the Creek Haven, a sobriquet for the Bayelsa State Government House, is battling to get re-elected for second term under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
But the candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Timipre Sylva, and that of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Udengs Eradiri, who are no pushovers, are poised to wrest power from the incumbent governor, whose first tenure will end on February 14, 2024.
Unlike the previous governorship contests in the state, the coming poll promises to be interesting, tense, intriguing and of wider participation by voters considering the intensity of campaigns carried out by flagbearers of their parties particularly those of the PDP, APC and LP.
Though 16 political parties are taking part in the coming election, political analysts opined that the poll is a two-horse race between the candidates of the PDP, Senator Douye Diri, and the APC, former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, while the candidate of the LP, Udengs Eradiri, is seen as a political dark horse that could spring surprises if the voters decide to abandon the old political order in the state.
Already, the race is filled with the frenzy, intrigues and drama that come with politicking as there have been alignments and re-alignments and clandestine meetings have taken over the nights.
The political gladiators are certainly gearing up for the battle of wits to succeed Douye Diri or perhaps put an end to his political dynasty (the Prosperity Government) which has held sway since he assumed office on February 14, 2020.
In the 2019 governorship poll that threw up Diri, after the Supreme Court overturned the victory of Mr. David Lyon, the then candidate of the APC, there was an interplay of various factors like security, electoral umpire, capacity, money and propaganda; all those combined to sway the voters’ choices.
But this time round, political watchers believe the governorship poll will be a titanic battle with the APC deeply rooted at the central government and the PDP having its firm grip on the state government and the LP depending on the youths to make impact.
But what will actually define the day at the governorship election, which will throw up the next governor of the state come November 11 will comprise a number of factors such as performances, perceptions, connections, financial resources, acceptance, among other critical factors.
Bayelsa political trajectory
Given the trajectory of power play in Bayelsa politics, there are two things one cannot take away from the majority of Bayelsa voters, political analysts and observers: their love for the choice of governorship candidates produced by the different political parties, their antecedents in the positions they hold as well as the ones they previously held and their contributions to the peace, security and development of the citizens of the state.
As the stage is now set and the battle already intense on who the cap should fit to take over the mantle of leadership in the state, the battle is among all the regular political parties but the ruling PDP, the APC and the LP stand out as parties of choice with promising political manifestos to convince the voters on whom to vote for.
Based on the history of both the PDP and the APC in the state, there is political belief that any person, either of the two parties throws up as the standard bearer stands the chance of becoming the next governor of the state.
But with the rise in prominence of the LP and the ‘Obidients’ Movement’ in the country’s political space, the LP is a party to beat considering the impressive performance of the party in the state during the Presidential election held February 25, 2023.
There is a widespread belief in Bayelsa that the person likely to win the poll is always known few weeks to the actual election day due to certain factors such as followership, motivation, quality of power brokers, gale of defections, party unity, robust campaigns among others.
Frontliners
While many political observers contend that the November 11 poll may just be a two-horse race between Governor Douye Diri and the immediate past Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva of the APC, some analysts have warned that the other political parties and their candidates should not be ignored.
Specifically, supporters of the LP standard bearer, Comrade Udengs Eradiri, a former President of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) Worldwide believed that he could spring by riding on the wave of his popularity and that of the party in the last general elections to defeat the ruling PDP and the opposition APC in the state.
Apart from the top three contenders, the electoral umpire equally listed as candidates for the election Subiri Waibodei Joseph of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Osuluku Binalaiyefa of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Simon Imotimi Karioru of the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), Idikio Warmate Jones of the Accord Party and Kalango Stanley Davies of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), among others.
A stalwart of one of the leading parties, while assessing his party’s chances in the coming elections noted that the coming poll would be dramatic and eye-opening, stressing that the political dynamics prevailing in the state is different from what happened in the 2019 election.
He asserted that Bayelsa electorate are going to elect the right person for the topmost job in the state who will not play politics with people’s lives, wellbeing and security.
He stated that the last presidential election had shown the people that their votes could count and many of them are ready to use that power to enthrone the best person among the pack of candidates.
Governor Douye Diri
The incumbent Governor of the state and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Douye Diri, has come a long way politically. Diri had represented Kolokuma/Opokuma-/Yenagoa Federal Constituency between 2015 and 2019 before he was elected into the Senate in 2019.
He hails from Sampou community, Kolokuma/Opokuma LGA in Bayelsa Central Senatorial District. He is seeking a re-election for a fresh mandate to enable him to continue as Governor and build on the successes recorded in his first term.
He is a graduate of Political Science (Education) and worked as a teacher for many years before he ventured into business and later joined active politics. He has christened his administration ‘Government of Prosperity’.
While assessing his chances, Diri said he was confident of victory as neither his government nor his party is afraid of any opposition party in the state. He declared Bayelsa as a PDP state, adding that the party in the state is more united now than ever before and was ready to face any opposition in the election.
Diri believes he deserves a second term based on his performance in almost four years, saying that his administration had made appreciable progress in virtually every sector of the state’s economy.
He listed some of them to include infrastructure, education, health agriculture, sports, skills acquisition and human capacity development.
Ardent PDP supporters and chieftains believe that Diri is a winning team that should not be changed but be allowed to continue by urging Bayelsans to re-elect him.
For the supporters, there is no vacancy at the Creek Haven, noting that Governor Douye Diri will win in all the eight local government areas of Bayelsa State regardless of where the other candidates come from.
They say that Project Bayelsa is very key to the Governor and he feels very strongly about it.
Though he is passionate about developing the state which is believed not to be at par yet with other states created the same time with it, political analysts believe that he has not done pretty good in ‘stomach infrastructure’.
It is believed that due to unemployment, poor electricity supply, among others, many citizens of the state have been frustrated by poverty with the culture of begging now the order of the day.
Notwithstanding the stigma of stinginess placed on him, Governor Diri remains a candidate to beat on November 11 as he still commands a wide followership across the length and breadth of the state.
Chief Timipre Sylva
Chief Timipre Sylva was born in Brass, Bayelsa State. He got part of his education in Bayelsa and in Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria. He was a member of the Rivers State House of Assembly in the 1990s.
Sylva graduated from the University of Port Harcourt with distinction in English (Linguistics) in 1986. At the time, he was the best graduating student from his department and departmental valedictorian. He was subsequently awarded a Doctor in International Relations (Honoris causa) by the UBIS University in 2011. Sylva was awarded his second Doctorate (Honoris Causa) in Public Administration on the 2nd of December 2020 by AiPA (African Institute of Public Administration), Leading Edge Foundation and LBBS.
Sylva’s political career started in 1992 when he won a seat in the House of Assembly Election representing Brass constituency in old Rivers State. At the time, he was the youngest of all the members in the House of Assembly.
His political career continued when he was appointed as the Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Petroleum in 2004, Dr Edmund Daukoru. He continued in that position until he resigned to join the PDP governorship primaries in 2006 in Bayelsa State in which he placed second behind Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.
After the PDP presidential primaries election and Jonathan was appointed as a running mate to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of blessed memory, the governorship candidacy for PDP became vacant, and conventional wisdom took the better of the political actors and Sylva was elevated to occupy the position of PDP gubernatorial candidate.
As a candidate of the PDP Sylva won the 2007 Bayelsa State gubernatorial election and succeeded Goodluck Jonathan who went on to become Vice President. During his inauguration he had said that Bayelsa was “the least developed industrially and commercially” of all 36 states.
On the other hand, former Governor Sylva is also very optimistic that he would win the November 11 election and emerge as the next governor of the state.
He claimed that he joined the governorship race because the present administration headed by Douye Diri is not equal to the task in putting Bayelsa on the path of genuine prosperity. He believes the people of the state are eager to vote out the PDP administration and enthrone the APC in power.
How well Sylva has been able to manage the discontent that greeted his emergence as the party candidate as well as the alleged frosty relationship between him and some party leaders is not yet clear as tongues are still wagging.
Some party faithful argued that Sylva having been a former Governor and Minister should have allowed David Lyon to try to reclaim his mandate which was overturned by the Supreme Court on the eve of his swearing in.
The immediate past Minister of State for Petroleum Resources is not a political Lilliput and can square up with any opponent and defeat him.
Despite the alleged schisms in his party, the APC, Sylva’s rising political profile in the state is enough to scare his opponents. If crowds at campaign grounds were anything to go by, it won’t be wrong to say that Sylva has won the election already.
Engineer Udengs Eradiri
Comrade Udengs Eradiri was born on 22nd March, 1976. He is a member of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, COREN Certified graduate from the University of Benin with a degree in Production Engineering and also has a certificate in Dredging Technology from the A&M University Texas USA.
He also obtained an Honorary Doctorate (Hons.) in Business Management and Corporate Leadership at European American University in 2017. He also attended the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru Jos, Nigeria. He is certified by the Lagos Business School, Nigeria on Negotiation Skills.
He is an engineer, businessman, human rights activist, Ijaw Leader and politician who is determined to continually enhance the business and corporate sector by fostering management skills, technical expertise and effective leadership, determined to contribute and provide support to community development programs in the Niger-Delta Region, Nigeria and the world at large.
Comrade Eradiri, a former President of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), who is the candidate of the Labour Party, brims with confidence about the possibility of emerging the next governor of the state.
The activist-turned politician believes strongly that the people of the state will vote for complete change of old order on November 11.
Eradiri has always decried that widespread poverty in Bayelsa and that businesses are leaving Yenagoa for other places due to alleged poor governance by Governor Douye Diri.
Eradiri who served as Commissioner for Youth and later redeployed to the Ministry of the Environment in the state under former Governor Seriake Dickson, noted that he would anchor his development agenda on ‘People, Education, Agriculture and Power’ (PEAP).
Eradiri, an intellectually mobile politician, also promised to leverage the recent inclusion of power generation into the concurrent legislative list to use the abundant gas deposits across the state for industries and power generation, if elected.
The LP governorship candidate, who political observers described as a dark horse is a formidable force to reckon with on the election day and whoever ignores him does so at his/her own peril.
Voting strengths of Bayelsa LGAs
Bayelsa, a riverine and estuary state, has a total area of 10,773 square kilometres comprising eight local government areas: Ekeremor, Kolokuma/Opokuma, Yenagoa, Nembe, Ogbia, Sagbama, Brass and Southern Ijaw.
The current data on voting strength of the eight LGAs indicate that the state has 1,056,862 registered voters as of the last registration exercise done by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) before the February and March 2023 general elections.
It is believed that the voting strength of the eight LGAs and voters actually turning out to vote for parties and candidates of their choice will be a major determinant of chances of the parties to win the November 11, 2023.
The candidates and 16 political parties vying for the coming guber poll, will battle for votes in the areas having highest number of voters outdo their opponents.
INEC records show that out of the figure, Yenagoa LGA has the highest, with 218,294; Southern Ijaw, one of the biggest areas in the state, ranks second with 184,401 registered voters; Sagbama ranks third with 138,832 voters, while Ekeremor, another area with high population, is fourth with 137,225 registered voters.
Ogbia has 119,571; Nembe, 99,035; Brass, 94,040 while Kolokuma/Opokuma LGA has 65,364.
From the figures, YELGA is considered to be the cash cow which every candidate and party will battle to get big votes. Apart from having highest number of voters, YELGA is where people turn out to vote in elections en masse compared to other areas.
From the electoral umpire’s data, the PDP made huge wins in the last presidential election in the areas having largest number of voters with the exception of Yenagoa Council where it scored less than the LP.
The PDP and LP lost to the APC in Ogbia, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s LGA which had been PDP’s fortress since 1999 until the 2015 governorship election when electorate of the council voted overwhelmingly for the APC.
The areas won by PDP had been its strongholds, just as the whole state was, until recently when the APC and surprisingly the LP’s Third Force made incursions into its (PDP’s) territories in Ogbia and YELGA.
Despite the inroads made by the APC into Bayelsa East in recent times, PDP won the last presidential election in Brass and Nembe where it has also wielded influence in previous dispensations. However, the situation may change this time round as the candidate of the APC is both paternally and maternally from the two councils.
These show that the voting strength of the local government areas will matter a lot in the November 11 poll, and the parties/candidates will fiercely scramble for huge-winning votes in the areas having largest number of voters.
However, given that the governorship election is more of grassroots election than presidential election, the voters’ interest and ethnic sentiments may come to play, even though Bayelsa is a homogenous Ijaw state.
Although new patterns of advanced vote trading mar sincere voting, the degree of voter turnout, given sensitisation by partisan and non-partisan individuals and organisations, peaceful election and transparency on the part of the INEC will be crucial factors to determine who wins Bayelsa’s governorship election on Saturday, November 11.
The battle for the exalted seat of governor of the state may be among the PDP, APC and LP, all other things being equal.
Candidates’ strongholds and battleground councils
Going by projections by the electorate, political analysts and observers, the candidates of the three leading political parties in the state — the PDP, APC and LP have their strongholds in some local government areas.
Political pundits are of the view that the governorship election is more grassroots-oriented than the presidential election as the voters’ interest and ethnic sentiments may come to play despite the fact that Bayelsa is a homogenous Ijaw state.
Political observers opined that the incumbent governor and candidate of the PDP, Senator Douye Diri, who is from Sampou in Kolokuma/Opokuma LGA, will record overwhelming victory in KOLGA, Sagbama and Ekeremor.
But in other LGAs including Yenagoa, it is believed that he would perform average but will not have upper hand in those councils. However, he is still a man to beat in the November 11 election.
The candidate of the APC, Chief Timipre Sylva, is believed to have a strong hold in Bayelsa East comprising Nembe, Brass and Ogbia LGAs.
Sylva, whose running mate, Great Joshua MacIver, is from Southern Ijaw, is also favoured to win SILGA. Therefore, the ex-minister is also a man to beat in the poll.
As for the candidate of the LP, Udengs Eradiri, who hails from Yenagoa, he boasts of youths’ support across the LGAs. He is favoured to spring surprises in YELGA, Ogbia and SILGA.
The 47-year-old engineer, whose running mate is a retired military officer, is considered as the third force and the political pendulum might swing to his favour.
