BAYELSA APC JOURNEY AND NEW RULES OF ENGAGEMENT IN THE NIGER DELTA (1)
Sometime in February 2014, as we finalised plans to move the APC into Bayelsa state, a brief meeting was held among former Governor Timipre Sylva, Chief Tiwei Orunimighe (the APC interim chairman as he then was) and myself in a location in Port Harcourt. The timetable for the ward registration of new members was out, but we had no secretariat. So we agreed to do something to change this situation by giving the party an edifice that will serve both as its Bayelsa administrative headquarters and a concrete symbol of its presence in the state.
To this effect, Chief Sylva provided a property for us to site the office in; but it was sealed by the the PDP led Bayelsa state government which claimed ownership of the said property. It must be recalled that the same building was previously used as a campaign office for the Goodluck Jonathan campaign in 2011 under then Gov Sylva.
We got another property – a one-time secretariat of the PDP in 2003 – which I personally paid for. Still it was also raided and eventually sealed by the state Governor through his then Chief of Staff, (who incidentally, has just joined our party, which is now the new bride in Bayelsa State. He is most welcome) with a warning that ” Boko Haram’s Political party or Islamic party is not welcomed in Bayelsa State, the home of Mr President Jonathan, leader of the PDP and “leader” of the ijaw nation.
In both cases, the raiders of our Secretariat were aided by the Bayelsa State Police command. Thus even when the estate agent that rented the property to us contacted the Commissioner of Police, she was rudely told it was an “order from above”.
Like a choir singing from the same well-rehearsed hymn book, that same week, the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) issued a statement proclaiming Bayelsa state a PDP state and asking APC members to limit their activities to the North. This was followed by similar press statements from a plethora of government funded and aided groups from the region and state. As if in a competition to be the most vocal Anti-APC folks around, elements from various ex-militant groups, the Ijaw National Congress etc all joined the fray and issued statements declaring their unalloyed support for the PDP and reinforcing the persona non-grata status of the APC in the state and region.
Against this backdrop, on the eve of our ward registration we were faced with the daunting and distracting task of searching for a yet another Secretariat. But I had an ace up my sleeves. Unknown to both our detractors and friends, I had also rented a third property as a backup plan. So, at this point, I eventually revealed its existence and location which we finally settled for.
Having secured a secretariat against stiff opposition, we were still faced with the challenge of security. The Bayelsa State police command, as I have already pointed out above claimed to be working with a mandate “from above ” to frustrate our lawful efforts aimed at planting our party, the APC, in the state. So they were not an option to trust our security with. They had in fact been harassing our interim chairman incessantly in the weeks leading to that time.
The morning after I disclosed the new Office space I had secured, the party chairman, Chief Tiwei and I conferred; and were able to raise 5 police troopers/trucks totalling 20 mobile policemen from outside the state whom we brought into the state with trepidation. By a stroke of luck, the Bayelsa state police command upon seeing our security thought that we had some form of approval from “Abuja” and supported us with an extra trooper/truck less than an hour after we opened the secretariat with our supporters watching with apprehension and cautious optimism at the sudden twist. I will return to this later on this piece.
We must recall that the kaiama declaration gave birth to the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) and other affiliate groups like Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta (MEND) down the line. These groups were supposed to be non- partisan. In fairness to them, most were non-partisan until the emergence of Dr Goodluck Jonathan as acting President and later President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
It must be pointed out that in their haste to support the Jonathan Presidency and demonize those who do not, they missed some very vital lessons in the history of the political development of the Ijaws and the Niger Delta.
The first civilian governor of the old Rivers State, Chief Melford Okilo, of blessed memory, founded the National Solidarity Movement (NSM) in 1998 as a political party of choice within the state and region instead of joining the PDP. Okilo was to later move into the PDP to actualise his senatorial ambition in 1999. Even in the First Republic, the Ijaw elites formed the Niger Delta Congress (NDC) through which the young Okilo won and gained a seat in the National Parliament. It must be noted specially that although formed by prominent Ijaws and with the avowed objective of promoting Ijaw interest, none of the aforementioned political parties attempted to forcefully impose their will on and claimed to have a monopoly of control over all Ijaws. So I have always wondered the basis on which some people have been pursuing the claim that PDP was an “Ijaw” party. The brutal truth is that the PDP was not and will never be an Ijaw party. In the same vein, no other political party can successfully sustain such a claim on any other ethnic group.
Giving the foregoing, it was wrong for the leadership of the IYC, INC, a faction of MEND, ELDERS and opinion leaders in the state to mortgage the destiny of our people at the altar of political expediency by tying our collective future to the apron string of a political party or politician. I hold that this was wrong then, and it still remains wrong today.
I find it even harder to believe that today, after committing such atrocious blunder, that this same leadership has made available its platform to the losing party in the general elections in an attempt to surreptitiously set agenda for the new ruling party and government. Where else in the world can this happen? How do people eat their cake and still hope and want to have same which has been eaten?
How do you lose a national election out of your sheer ineptitude and still want to control the system by seeking undue “relevance ” through the backdoor using platforms provided by socio cultural and pressure groups which have no political affiliation, but made the mistake of dabbling into partisan politics in the last elections.
After such a major faux pas, what we expect from these people is deep sober reflection and stock taking. This should be a period of soul searching in order to reinvent, restrategise and acquire new engagement tools required to chart a new course for the people they claim to represent. Rather they have continued to strut the horizon as if an election didn’t take place only a few months ago. A wiser set of people should have leant valuable lessons from that election in which Nigerians clearly rejected a previously existing order and asked for CHANGE. The same change which has seen that the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) consistently received much more monthly allocation (its full constitutional monthly allocation) in the last 2 months than at any other time during the last government as available records show. If this government can show such fidelity to the NDDC, then I wonder why anyone would think that the government is not moving as fast as it can to resolve the impasse at the Amnesty office. Make no mistake, I empathise with the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme beneficiaries whose studies have been affected by the regrettable delays of payments. Nonetheless, the point must be made that no one should play divisive politics with such a sensitive issue. In other words, the plight of our students should not be politicised and used as a tool for political mobilisation against a government that means well for the Niger Delta. This is where I have a problem with the meeting called by the Ex-MEND leadership.
It is not the place of all those who prioritized their blind support for the failed Transformation Agenda of the last government over the survival and development of Bayelsa State and the Niger delta to set agenda for this new government others risked so much to put in place.
( to be concluded)
***Preye Aganaba, is a Public Affairs commentator and APC candidate for Bayelsa central senatorial zone in the 2015 elections.