Timipre Sylva in the Emerging Political Scenario
Timipre Sylva has had an unpleasant experience at the hands of the outgoing regime, but his travails have seemed to guarantee his path to power in ways, certainly, not imagined by his adversaries. Anayo Okolie writes
It was only after all efforts to stop his re-election bid at the state and zonal levels of the ruling party had failed that the party mandarins at the national level stepped in with full force. But the force was neither that of law nor of political morality or public opinion. It was the force of a bizarre political indiscretion coordinated and deployed from the very top. Former Baylesa State governor, Chief Timipre Sylva, was maligned by the national leadership of his former party, Peoples Democratic Party, and accused of sundry offences, from the bogus to the absurd, and finally excluded from the state’s governorship race in 2011. Till date, no one or institution has seemed to really state any sin known to law that was committed by the former governor to warrant the exclusion that dazed and angered the whole country.
Virtually every national newspaper in the country carried editorials at the time calling on the PDP and its national leader, President Goodluck Jonathan, to rescind the incomprehensible exclusion of Sylva from the governorship election he had been certified to contest only few months before. All the calls fell on deaf ears.
New Political Course
Though, he fell under the axe of the ruling party’s national leadership, Sylva’s politics was far from over. His victorious adversary, incumbent Governor Seriake Dickson, seemed unable to immediately decide what to do with power. He did not have the strong popular support that his predecessor enjoyed. To compound his problem, Dickson dwelled on blaming his predecessor for everything wrong with the state – a situation that later became obvious as the sign of the governor’s lack of a free hand in governing the state.
But Sylva had moved on. He joined the All Progressives Congress and helped to reinvigorate the party in Bayelsa State, while also playing a higher role at the national level of the party.
Sylva explained his move to APC, thus, “In agreeing to be part of this move, the need to position the Niger Delta and the Ijaw nation properly in the emerging Nigeria was uppermost on my mind. I also intend to keep alight a traditional alliance between the Niger Delta and the North, which over the decades has proved significant in our journey to emancipation…
“We realise that in politics there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. So the move to APC is not an act of vendetta. We have forgiven those who plotted against us and left everything to God.
“We have moved on and are right now simply pursuing a political career, which we think is in our best interest and the best interest of the Ijaw nation, the Niger Delta, and Nigeria.”
Patriotic Zeal
Sylva demonstrated great consideration for the interest of the country during the APC national convention in Lagos, June 13-14 last year. He stepped down to pave way for the emergence of the former Edo State governor, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, as national chairman of the party. This was despite being backed the APC governors, who constituted a key segment of the party, and favoured to emerge national chairman by other stakeholders.
“My decision to withdraw is based on my passion for the unity of our party,” Sylva said concerning his pull out from the APC national chairmanship contest, which happened midway into the convention.
Sylva’s withdrawal from the national chairmanship race, which followed pressure and high level negotiations, was the highpoint of the convention to set up a leadership for the opposition alliance that was only in embryonic form. Many believe the decision saved the party from a major division that would have endangered it from the very start.
The former governor is one of the staunchest backers of the APC presidential candidate and president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, who won the March 28 presidential election. Sylva has a firm trust in Buhari’s abilities. He said during the anti-Buhari hate tantrums in the buildup to the presidential election, “Nigeria’s economy today needs revamping. Our security is in dire need of resuscitation, our economy is in shambles. Over 200 girls from Chibok are still nowhere to be found.
“The good news is that we have the solution to the myriad problems confronting Nigeria today. General Buhari is that solution. We are happy that he has come out of retirement to revamp Nigeria.
“Some people say General Buhari is too old; we will not use age as an advantage in this campaign, so we don’t look as if we are riding on the inexperience of our opponents.” Nigerians bought into that counsel. The hate campaigns against Buhari failed to catch the interest of most Nigerians, who elected the former military Head of State as the country’s next president.
Inauguration Committee Co-chair
Sylva continues to play a key role in the incoming Buhari administration. The former Bayelsa State governor was last month appointed co-chair of the 2015 Presidential Inauguration Planning Committee, to work alongside the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, for a smooth handover to Buhari on May 29.
Anyim said, “The mandate of the committee is to draw up programmes of activities for the inauguration ceremony, arrange invitations and accommodation for foreign and local dignitaries, organise approved programme of activities, draw up budget for the programme of activities and co-opt into subcommittees persons that may be necessary to assist in the discharge of the activities.”
The inauguration committee is a joint committee of the current and incoming administrations, chaired by the SGF for the present administration, and Sylva for the incoming government. The committee has 14 members from the present government, and 13 members from the incoming administration.
The Last Card
But just as the wind-down of the Jonathan administration is being handled by the various committees of his government and the incoming government of Buhari, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission appears eager to play its own last card in a longstanding court-cum-media trial of Sylva. The trial, which has bored and bothered many Nigerians, began in earnest after he left office in January 2012 as Bayelsa State governor following his inexplicable exclusion from the governorship race. Last week EFCC resuscitated the corruption charges against the former governor. He was accused of stealing N19.2billion from the state treasury while he governed the state between 2007 and 2011. But he has denied those charges and currently defending himself in court against the charges filed by EFCC.
The suit had been in the doldrums after the commission failed to prove its case against the ex-governor for nearly three and a half years.
APC member in Bayelsa State and close political associate of Sylva, Mr. John Ayebaralate Okhai, says, “For more than three and a half years, the Jonathan presidency has deployed state machinery to persecute Sylva, yet, he remains unshaken. There is no reason to fear that if President Jonathan could not jail him all along, he can legally do it a few weeks to the end of his tenancy in Aso Rock. Under our laws, an accused remains innocent until proven guilty. Sylva is an innocent man.”
Ijaw Leadership
Many believe what is at issue in the latest EFCC onslaught is the leadership of Sylva’s native Ijaw nation. The general feeling is that it is a case of the Biblical hand of Esau and voice of Jacob – the hand being that of EFCC and the voice that of Sylva’s traducers who feel threatened by his rapid rise in national politics and possible emergence as leader of the Ijaw nation.
The obvious goal, it seems, is to try to neutralise the former governor’s influence and acceptability before Buhari, who has made the fight against corruption one of the cardinal principles of his incoming government.
Former Chief of Staff, Government House, Bayelsa State, under Sylva, Chief Samuel Ogbuku, takes a more spiritual look at the political travails of the former governor. “No amount of hate or envy can stop Sylva from being what God plans for him,” Ogbuku says. “Let me advise those chasing Sylva like Pharaoh chased the children of Israel, because they may also drown in the Red Sea.
“Today, the Lord is bringing back smiles on his face, yet some Ijaw people are still complaining that why should he be made the co-chairman of the 2015 Presidential Inauguration Planning Committee. If it were to be in the powers of some people, by now Sylva and his supporters would have been pronounced dead. Then, I guess, these people would have celebrated. But the irony of life is that no man can decide our future and power belongs to God.
“Sylva may not be a perfect man, but I believe God has a purpose for his life. He may not be loved by some, but when the Lord promotes, no man can demote. If some of us cannot see the hand of God here, then I guess we need spiritual vision. For me, the current happenings in our political space have humbled me and confirmed that, indeed,
power is transient.”
Undeterred
But it does not seem Buhari is prepared to ride on the politics of the anti-Sylva campaigners – obviously having a good understanding of the issues at stake, and having himself also recently suffered such political blitzkrieg.
APC national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had also been bombarded with threats of corruption trial in the thick of electioneering for the last general election, in what many saw as an attempt to neutralise one of the main pillars of Buhari and the party. The threats have since gone quiet – an indication they were intended to achieve a political goal that has been overtaken by events, and not purposed to really fight corruption.
Sylva remains totally unfazed by the recent “distractions.”
According to the former governor’s media adviser, Mr. Doifie Buokoribo, “Sylva is eminently qualified to serve in the inauguration committee as co-chairman and in any suitable capacity in the incoming administration of General Buhari (rtd.). He is principled, broad-minded and intelligent. There are not many Nigerian politicians of his kind.”