Akani Alaka
The battle to succeed Governor Seriake Dickson, as the next occupant of Creek Haven is expected to get fiercer in the next few weeks, as political parties intensify their campaigns ahead of the November 16 governorship race.
According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, 52 political parties and their candidates will participate in the governorship election.
INEC Head of Department, Voter Education and Publicity in the state, Mr. Wilfred Ifogah, told journalists that the candidates include 46 males and six females. “Well, there are other parties but only these 52 parties met the qualifications and are able to provide candidates,” he explained.
Even then, with 52 candidates, the electorate in Bayelsa will be confronted with the challenge of managing the long and unwieldy ballot paper at the polling stations.
The APC challenge
However, analysts insist that in spite of the seemingly huge number of candidates, the battle for the Creek Haven is between the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presently ruling the State and the main challenger, the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Bayelsa is widely regarded as a ‘PDP State’, since all the governors and nearly most of its elected lawmakers at both the state and national levels have emerged on the party’s platform.
However, the performance of the party during the 2019 general elections indicated that the main opposition party is on the ascension in the state. In the National Assembly election, APC snatched two House of Representatives seats out of five from the PDP.
The party also won one senatorial seat out of three, whereas it had none in 2015. In the House of Assembly election, APC won four out of the 23 seats declared, as opposed to one out of 24 it secured in the 2015 election.
In the presidential election, the APC garnered an impressive 118,821 votes as against 2015 when it got a paltry 5,194 votes in the state.
It was also believed that the appointment of former governor, Timipre Sylva, who governed the state on the platform of PDP, but who is now one of the chieftains of APC as a minister by President Muhammadu Buhari, indicated the determination of the national ruling party to bring Bayelsa into its fold.
The burden to keep Bayelsa as a PDP state, therefore, is on Douye Diri, who defeated 21 other aspirants to emerge the flagbearer of the ruling party in the primary held weeks ago. The PDP gubernatorial candidate is the senator representing Bayelsa Central Senatorial District at the 9th National Assembly.
When he met with some journalists recently in Abuja, Diri said he has all it takes to defeat David Lyon, the APC candidate, especially if the contest is free and fair.
“Yes, we have a fight in front of us, but I don’t see the other people as being so strong on ground to fight the PDP. If we have a free, fair, transparent election, the APC cannot win a councillorship election in Bayelsa State, that’s the truth,” the PDP governorship candidate said.
“It’s all these hypes about federal might, using security agencies to intimidate or using INEC to go and write a result – those are the propaganda that we have been receiving. Our appeal here is that the security agencies must be professional. INEC must be an umpire and if there is a level playing field for us, I can assure you that the opponents are neither here nor there to actually contest this election with the PDP,” he added.
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Reconciling aggrieved aspirants
Yet, Diri, a 1989 graduate of Political Science and Education from the University of Port Harcourt, who started off as a teacher in the then old Rivers State and was the first elected secretary of Ijaw National Congress, knows that the task ahead of him will not be an easy one. The most pressing of the tasks arguably will be how to ensure that the party goes into the governorship election as a united entity. Some of the aspirants, who felt they were not fairly treated during the primary, are threatening to leave the PDP.
Notable among the aggrieved aspirants is the former boss of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Chief Timi Alaibe, who recently filed a suit to challenge the outcome of the primary. Ironically, Diri was a political ally of Alaibe for about 10 years. He had aligned with Alaibe after he resigned his appointment as Executive Secretary of Bayelsa Youth Development Centre under the government of late Diepreye Alamieyesigha. The alliance was borne out of the need to engineer a new political order in the state.
“A lot of people thought I was a staff of NDDC, but I wasn’t. I was a political ally and somebody who was close to Timi Alaibe believing that we should enthrone a government that will be more responsible and responsive to the people. I was with Chief Alaibe for about 10 years and in each election we go to, one thing or the other, he will come back to the NDDC and some of us didn’t feel comfortable with that,” said Diri.
The PDP governorship candidate said he was appointed commissioner for youths and sports in 2006 by the then Governor Goodluck Jonathan, following the impeachment of Alamieyesiegha. He was in the same cabinet with Seriake Dickson, who was the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice.
“So, we all belong to the same cabinet under former President Goodluck Jonathan as governor of Bayelsa. So, by the time he (Jonathan) was elevated to be vice president, and president, Bayelsa has this vacuum. Timipre Sylva came to fill it, but in those five years, I was not in Bayelsa. I was rather a member of the governing council of the University of Maiduguri,” Diri said.
He, however, added that Alaibe did not take kindly to his decision to join Dickson’s administration following the ouster of Sylva.
“Being a former colleague, he (Dickson) invited me to be part of the government, part of the campaign and all of that. When I accepted and I informed my political ally (Alaibe) at that time, he didn’t take it kindly. So, that was how I parted ways with Chief Alaibe.
“I joined Governor Dickson, we went into campaign and he won in 2012. So, I was appointed first as deputy chief of staff for about a year, later the designation was changed to principal executive secretary. That’s where I stayed until 2014 when Governor Dickson agreed to release me to go and contest for the House of Representatives and I won,” he added.
Though he was emphatic that no one, including himself, is indispensable in the battle to continue the restoration agenda of Governor Dickson, Diri said efforts are on to ensure that all aspirants, including Alaibe worked for the success of the party in the November governorship election.
“Many of them have agreed that they will not go to any other political party. They will stay back, work with the party to ensure that the party wins because if I win the election, I am not winning as Douye Diri. I am being nominated by the PDP, so, it is the PDP winning the election. I am not saying we are home and dry yet because at the end of the day, we need to get all 20 of them to come back to the fold,” he said.
Relationship with Jonathan
The Senator said that he has the support of former President Jonathan behind his ambition to become the next governor of Bayelsa State contrary to speculations in some quarters:
He said: “I have a very cordial relationship with the former president. And he was the first person I consulted. I went to him in his house, he received me. In fact, he took me to his wife because the wife was like our mother at that time when he was governor.
“So, my wife, who was commissioner’s wife, was like her daughter. So, I consulted him and he gave me his blessings. I consulted many others of our leaders before I finally went into this.”
Diri said he decided to contest for the governorship ticket barely after three months of being elected as a Senator due to the desire to sustain the restoration agenda of Governor Dickson as demanded by his people as well as the zoning which favoured his senatorial district.
“We were there in the Senate and the next was that I had calls from my people saying, look, you have very good background. You have the experience in the executive. You have the experience in the legislature and you have been part and parcel of the beginning of this restoration government till now. Most of the policies, you are part of those who initiated them.
“And if Governor Dickson is exiting, we can’t find any competent person beyond you. And by the zoning of our state, it favours your senatorial district, so we are calling on you to return from the senate, come and contest for the office of the governor,” he said.
He also dismissed insinuations that he will become a stooge to the incumbent governor if he is elected.
“I am a man of principle. I choose my friends and I choose who I want to work with and I choose to work with Governor Dickson. I worked with him and I am very, very satisfied working with Governor Dickson,” he said.
Diri added that with the State’s law on transparency bill and the monthly transparency briefing through which the Dickson administration has been briefing the people on the finances of the state, there will be no need for any cover up for the governor, even at the end of his tenure.
He revealed that as the former principal secretary in the government headed by Dickson, he was part of a committee that usually sit with the governor, the deputy governor and the commissioner for finance to allocate funds from Federal Account Allocation Committee, FAAC, receipts and Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, to the various ministries, departments and agencies.
“And so, at that point, I knew that Governor Dickson was not taking anything out from what was coming in. So, when people say you will be a stooge to cover up, I don’t know what and what I want to cover up, having known that this was the process until I left for the National Assembly.
“Even, when I left, that process was continuing. So, I believe that in the first place, there is nothing to cover up; that the resources that came into Bayelsa were used for the development of the state. There is a lot of ‘bad belle’ and blackmail in Bayelsa politics and in Nigerian politics generally. But with what I saw and participated in, I don’t think there is anything for me to cover up. I just believe that it is my humility, honesty, and my principles that he recognised and he feels that this will be the candidate that will serve the people well,” he said.
Agenda for Bayelsa
On his policy thrusts if elected, Diri said, he will continue with the revival of the educational sector began by the Dickson administration.
“Next will be the economy. For those of us who are from Bayelsa, who grew up in the old Rivers State and then, Bayelsa, our local economy is neither here nor there. The sitting governor has tried to bring in issues in agriculture, to explore our comparative advantage in agriculture and trade.
“But I want to build on the economy. I want to have a local economy where our people will be directly involved. Today, the number of Bayelsans involved in our economic activities is virtually down too low. That will be the bulwark of my economic thrust, not forgetting the issue of security.
“No government can thrive and do well without security. We are seeing a bit of it at the federal level here. The level of insecurity in the country is so high. Those are the things that we will actually look at. That’s not to say we are forgetting other sectors,” he said.
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As an underdog
Diri said he is not bothered that some people, including a member of the PDP, Timi Frank are underrating his ability to deliver the Bayelsa governorship seat again to PDP.
Diri said: “I like it when people underrate me and it is out of that underestimation that I always bring out surprises. When people say my emergence will make the other party to win, they have not taken into cognisance that this was the same man, who won continuously two elections into the House of Representatives and into the Senate and you say that man is an underdog? I am underdog; I want to be an underdog.
“And for the likes of my small brother, Timi Frank, I don’t think he has gone to his village, Odi for the past 15 years. People stay in Abuja and Port Harcourt and rant. So, let him keep doing his ranting. I know where I stand on; what I do back home; maybe he is right, but let it be with him.”
