*A Governor as a Wire-tapper: How an Executive Pervert Wrecked His State*

For a state governor ever vociferous and self-assured – sometimes

thoughtlessly so – in the murky terrain of Nigerian politics, Henry Seriake

Dickson of Bayelsa State could not have had anything short of the awesome

high-tech capabilities described in a detailed 9 June, 2016 report by

*Premium
Times*. Entitled “How Governors Dickson, Okowa Spend Billions on High-Tech

Spying of Opponents, Others,” the report shows a Bayelsa State chief

executive, obsessive about intelligence on political opponents, expending

billions of naira to acquire the latest equipment for surveillance and

communication interception.
With the tracking and decrypting technology afforded him by Circles 3 G of

Bulgaria, Governor Dickson and his strategists have at fingertip the

secrets and plans of his political opponents and key functionaries of

security agencies and institutions like the Independent National Electoral

Commission (INEC). Routine decryption of text messages and phone calls

furnish him with facts about the inclinations and vulnerability of

opponents and targeted individuals, including his own political appointees,

so he could act pre-emptively to safeguard his narrow political interests.

In the said Premium Times report, instances of particular individuals

tracked within Nigeria and abroad were given. Let it be known that the

often frowsty relationship between the governor and his erstwhile political

godfather, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, and wife, Patience, had to do

with unrelenting espionage directed at the First Family and the fact that

the governor knew enough to be wary of them. That Jonathan has chosen to

live outside the country is not just out of fear for the Economic and

Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) but a feeling of insecurity and of being

unwanted even at his hometown, Otuoke, in the domain of Seriake Dickson,

who is unpredictable.
At the level of law enforcement and national security, it is most

disappointing that the governor could unlawfully acquire and operate

international defence tools for mass surveillance without appropriate legal

action and/ or sanctions from the authorities. If the immediate past

National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd), was too far gone in

disorientation, mindlessly squandering Defence/anti-terrorism funds, what

has stopped his successor, General Mohammed Monguno (retd), from taking

necessary action to dismantle the criminal infrastructure and, possibly,

prosecute its operators who definitely are not covered by the immunity

their demented employer enjoys?
That Governor Dickson first engaged Italy's Hacking Team to which he had

paid hundreds of millions of naira in 2012 and then switched to Bulgaria's

Circles 3 G, paying a fresh N1.7 billion and “an extra annual maintenance

fee of N39.9 million,” shows the inane priorities and preoccupations of

this office-holder – how disconnected  he is from the people he was elected

in 2012 to serve.
Today in oil-rich Bayelsa State, in the fifth year of the ultra-corrupt and

directionless administration of Governor Dickson, the machinery of

government has virtually ground to a halt as famished civil servants and

teachers in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, unpaid for five

months, have abandoned their workplaces. Local government employees, too,

are being owed for upwards of 12 months and the governor has refused to pay

to them the N1.28 billion Central Bank bailout released to the state

government since last February. The case of retirees is as bad, having been

without their monthly pensions for nine consecutive months, just as

gratuities from 2009 to date remain unpaid.
In his characteristic gaucherie, he recently directed the state

Accountant-General to pay 50 per cent of salaries and then caused it to be

announced that salaries for May, 2016 have been paid, promising to pay the

backlog whenever the state's finances improve. Workers are not fooled and

public schools remain open without teachers, same as most ministries,

departments and agencies, where civil servants sign attendance registers in

the morning and disappear.
The state of affairs is alarming because this is a small state that often

receives a lion's share of the 13 per cent Derivation Fund in addition to

monthly statutory allocations from the Federation Account. Its internally

generated revenue (IGR), as high as N1.38 billion in April, 2013; N1.74

billion in August, 2014, and N1.1 billion in May, 2015, averaged N780

million per month between January, 2013 and January, 2016.

Withholding the N1.28 billion bailout for local council workers is only one

of several acts of perfidy by Governor Dickson. Back in 2012, he withheld

the over N5 billion Flood Relief Fund for victims of the flood disaster of

September-November, when thousands of distressed citizens took refuge in

school premises and received nothing beyond food rations, satchet water and

mattresses which were generously donated by corporate organizations,

charities and public-spirited individuals. He has not released that Fund

nor account for it to date.
Bayelsa State indigenes sent with fanfare in 2013 to Songhai Farms, Benin

Republic, by the state government for training in modern agricultural

techniques, found themselves stranded in that country as their fees and

allowances were never remitted for an entire year. Expelled by the

Institute, their parents/relatives in Bayelsa  State had to send money for

their transport back home. That was also the experience of Bayelsa students

who travelled to the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe

in 2012/2013 on state government scholarship. For most, no fees was

remitted. And, presently, his own political appointees disengaged

unceremoniously last February after laboring for his re-election, are in

anguish as Governor Dickson has refused to pay their salaries for January

and February.
That is the profile of Governor Dickson: a man for whom public service

means self-service. His preoccupation is with self-preservation as

evidenced by his private mass surveillance scheme, and his widely condemned

imposition of candidates for the State House of Assembly elections in 2015.

That was at enormous financial cost to the public treasury as many

candidates had to step down after succumbing to inducement. By the time he

began his own re-election bid in the third quarter of 2015 and followed

through the processes to the December 5 election, characterised by massive

voter inducement, Bayelsa State became literally insolvent. Sadly, the

state has become a reference point for political brigandage, given the

track record of its governors, from Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha to date.

*Peresuo D. Fubara is a Port Harcourt-based public affairs **analyst.*

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