Ahead of the December 5th gubernatorial election in Bayelsa State, former governor Timipreye Sylva, of the All Progressive Congress, APC, is one of leading contenders in the poll. In this interactive session he had with a consortium of media executives, he speaks on many knotty issues ahead the poll. Excerpts:
There is the question being asked by many including your opponents and that is what did you forget in the Government House since 2011 when the court annulled your tenure?
Anybody that asks that question is quite ignorant, I will say. I left Bayelsa State Government House unwillingly and all Bayelsans know the circumstances under which I left and since then no other opportunity has presented itself for me to re-contest for that office. This is the first opportunity that has presented itself since 2012 and so I don’t know why anybody will ask me if I forgot anything. Actually, the event of 2012 should be fresh in the mind of every well-meaning Bayelsan. I was disqualified by the powers that be from contesting an office I was still occupying at the time. I think that was the most preposterous thing; the most unjust thing that has happen on the surface of Bayelsa State. Most well-meaning Bayelsans think this is the time for God’s justice and justice being done by bringing me back and that’s why you see this overwhelming support. I didn’t forget anything in Bayelsa State Government House but Bayelsa State Government as we are concerned is headed by an usurper who came and used federal might. Today, when they now begin to shout about federal might, I wonder. Look at Bayelsa State now, look at Yenagoa, do you see any army check point? Now, take your mind back to 2012, at this time, towards the election in 2012, we had over a hundred check points in Bayelsa State manned by fierce-looking armed soldiers. My Government House was already blocked by an Armoured Personal Carrier (APC), and of course toward this time, an army helicopter was already flying over Bayelsa, so what are they talking about? Now, nothing of such is happening and yet they still want to scream because they are scared of their own shadows. I didn’t forget anything in Bayelsa Government House but I think it’s time for me to reclaim what is justly mine. I have a second tenure and the people of Bayelsa, the people of Bayelsa would have given me a second tenure if I had been allowed to contest but I was barred from re-contesting that election. Today, those people who barred me from contesting that election are no longer in the office by the grace of God, so the people has the opportunity of choosing their rightful leader and that is why I am presenting myself.
Your party, the APC, dislodged your brother, Dr Goodluck Jonathan from the presidency; don’t you think this alone might affect your Chances at the poll?
I don’t think this will have any impact on the election at all. Every Ijaw man should be fair to me and the APC. The former President, set the scene for his exit from office by bringing the war to his home. He started the fire and he didn’t start the fire from any other place, he started it from his home. Look, after I was removed from office, I went to exile; I was arrested by all kinds of people, many times. They never even left me alone after removing me from office, they wanted to kill me, they wanted to jail me, and they wanted to do everything to me. I was visited by a lot of elders from different part of the country; elders from the West visited me, elders from the East visited me, elders from the North visited me and the one question on the lips of all those elders who visited me, ‘do you not have elders in Bayelsa State who can intervene between yourself and the president?’ And I had no answer to give them. Now, I was pushed to the wall, I was pushed out of PDP, I didn’t leave PDP, I was pushed out of PDP and they were very joyful about pushing me out of PDP. Now, I saw an opportunity to find a roof over my head in the APC and so I joined the APC, body and soul and the Lord crowned that effort. Now, the former President is history, he and those who surrounded him are to blame. If he had brought everybody together, I mean kept us in one house together, Amechi wouldn’t have left probably, and I would not have left probably. In 2011, we all supported him but unfortunately he himself and those who were around him felt that we were no longer required. After winning the election, we were pushed out and we have to look for shelter. So, as far as I am concerned, Bayelsans sympathise with us and I think even the former President himself knows this because there was no other option left to us, what other option was left? He lost the election, the people of Bayelsa must move on in this country. Nigeria is not meant for us to lead forever, it was an opportunity, we led the country and now, it is no longer our time and as so anybody who is still reveling in that period is still living in the history. Please, wake up! today is a new day and today there is an APC government at the center led by President Muhammadu Buhari. The earlier we wake up to that fact, the better for us. Today, I am carrying the flag of the APC, of the ruling party. The earlier we wake up to that fact the better for us in this state because we cannot cease to live as a state because we have lost the Presidency. We must carry on in this country and this is another opportunity. I think I am doing a good service, I am providing myself to be a good bridge between Bayelsa and the center.
Your opponent, the incumbent governor of the state did say that the election is not going to be about him or you but about the people of Ijaw, who he stated are PDP people, which cast your candidature as anti-Ijaw interest, how do you react to this?
In a way I will agree with the governor that the election is not about me or about him but it is about Bayelsans and about the Ijaw people. I agree with him about that but when you take it further then you can see the state of mind of the man we are talking about, is a confused state of mind obviously. I had stated in other fora that none of the parties, neither APC nor PDP is an Ijaw party, they are national parties. I was one of those who brought PDP into Bayelsa; he was not even a member of the PDP. He was a member of AD at that time and then later I think he became a member of the ANPP at a time, he was never even a member of the PDP and that is, he doesn’t know that I know the PDP more than him. When I was in PDP, he was not even in PDP; he was just an interloper that joined to get the benefit of joining the PDP. Has he worked for that party? Because as far as I know after contributing to the impeachment of Alamieseigha, he came here and as compensation, he was made a commissioner. That was how he came to the PDP; he was made a commissioner as a compensation for the role he played in the impeachment of Alamieseigha. Then he became of a member of the House of Representatives because of his perceived loyalty to the former President and then a governor because they were the people who told all kind of lies to the former President and set him up against me. So, he became a beneficiary of lies. So I can’t blame him because he doesn’t even really know what the PDP stands for. If we are talking of Ijaw patriots, I consider myself one and I think today that well-meaning Ijaw people are quite happy with me because they believe that without me, there would have been no link with the center, there would have been no bridge builder. Now, I have provided that link to the center, I think that on the contrary, the APC is the patriotic party and I am the patriotic one. And I think that the Ijaw people should embrace the APC because this is our time to really get to the center, we have to live in this same country, whether our president lost the election or not. It is not the Ijaw people that lost the election because Ijaw people did not contest an election, I didn’t see Ijaw people on the ballot. I saw the PDP and the PDP presidential candidate who is an Ijaw son, but he lost and we have to carry on in this state, we have to carry on in this country. Thank you.
Your opponent describes you and your party as being violent, how do you react to this?
You see they always say that the cat wanted the apple and he jumped to catch the apple and couldn’t get the apple, then he consoled himself by saying ‘rotten apple’ and then he walks away. That is his only compensation because he just couldn’t get it.
Now, let me tell you, even this present out-going governor did everything to join the APC. He, himself had tried to join the APC but you know the APC is not for people like him. The APC is not for bullies, Pharaohs and Emperors and so unfortunately we didn’t accept him and now he is saying rotten apple because he couldn’t get in. Maybe if he had gotten in, he would be saying by now that the APC is the greatest party. If he is true to himself, of course I know he can never be true to himself but if he is true to himself, he should be truthful to tell Bayaelsans that he made attempts to join APC. If he lies about that, I will accept because he is always lying about everything. The APC cannot be a violent party, look at the streets today, just a few days, he himself instructed people to go out there and tear down my posters. Everywhere you go my posters are on the ground as if tearing posters mean winning elections. All the cases of violence have been perpetrated by the PDP. APC members has been violated in most wards, injured sometimes, we have to go out in our campaigns with extra security because of security threats. All kinds of people call you; all kinds of people send you text messages. The state has never been more violent as it is now. The numbers of people kidnapped now is steadily rising. I’d you talk of piracy, militancy... I fought militancy. I say that on the contrary that the out-going governor is the violent one who perpetrated violence, supports it, sponsored it. He is discussing with the kidnappers, he knows them, he is in touch with them, so why is he fooling Bayelsans? If you noticed, the kidnapping has always involved APC members, never PDP members, because the target is to bring fear to APC members. The trend is to kidnap APC members so that he can make them afraid but of course he is mistaking because APC members are very resolved more than ever before to get him out of office. Every lawful tactic to remove him out of office will be done by the APC and of course Bayelsans cannot possibly take another four years of Dickson’s ineptitude. So he continues to blame the APC for everything. So everything is APC, probably if a plate got broken in his house it is probably the APC that broke the plate in his house. So when a government has gotten to this, you know it has gone paranoid. I think the governor has gone paranoid about APC.
Let's take you back to the era where you reigned as governor from 2008 to 2011, there are insinuation that you underperformed and left a lot of abandoned projects to include the Airport project. What is your response to this?
That to me is the continuation of his frustration and paranoia. I came into government, there were a lot of projects, ongoing projects, and I did not call them abandoned projects. Every government starts a project and if they don’t finish such project, the incoming government will finish the project. The Banquet hall was such a project, it was started by Alamesiegha. I furnished it. The Treasury building was one of such project, I finished it. The Judiciary building, the library I finished them. I can’t finish counting them; I could have stated they were abandoned projects because a lot of those projects were not even touched by the Jonathan’s administration. They were started by Alamiesiegha but were abandoned by the Jonathan’s administration but I came and I took off from the very beginning and completed all those projects. The way I left office nobody would have thought I would have completed all those projects I started because I left in the middle of my tenure. My tenure was truncated, I wasn’t given time to finish the projects. When Dickson leaves now, he will leave a lot of projects also uncompleted, does it mean I will consider them abandoned projects because he did not complete them? He has abandoned his own projects now; these are the real meaning of abandoned projects. All the hospitals he has been building in Oporoma, in all places have been abandoned. He has abandoned the Isaac Boro Road; he is the one that is abandoning his own projects. I was doing my projects and I was removed from office, prevented from completing them, so I cannot be accused of abandoning any project that I inherited.
The governor says you are a guy-man and that the income of the state does not need a guy-man. Another thing is the issue of loan, which has kept bothering Bayelsans about who left what debt, who borrowed more from late Alamiesiegha to Jonathan down to you, can you clarify this and tell Bayelsans how much you inherited, how much you owe, how much you left behind before you left office?
Thank you, you say I am a guy-man governor (laughter). Well, I wonder what Dickson means by a guy-man but I think I am a typical Bayelsan. Dickson is just a disgrace to himself and I don’t know what he means by guy-man but everybody knows that governor Dickson is a bushman. He is a bushman, I am not exaggerating if I call him a bushman because that’s who he is, he knows too that he is a bushman and that is why he doesn’t have self confidence, that is why he calls me guy-man. He is country-man and I am guy-man. You also raised the issue of debt burden that is being much talked about but I really wish he could be truthful and that people can really stand up to the truth. Unfortunately people are full of lies. The figures are there, when the Jonathan’s administration was over, I came in. I inherited debts from Jonathan. Now, what we did was servicing those debts. What I did was to take a bond to absolve the debts that I inherited. I took a fifty (50) billion naira bond because we felt that if we service the loans alone to commercial banks it was costing us a lot. So we took some of that loan to absorb it in that bond and then we took some of that money from that bond to pay our contractors on the Brass Road and then we paid some money to the contractor on the Milford Okilo hospital. The bond was structured in such a way that it is a long term bond, so the tenure was longer so it could be easier for the state government to pay the interest rate and the tenure was longer so that the state government can cope with it. So we were able to put all the loans that we inherited into that bond.
Now, when I left and I hope that the Dickson administration will be sincere I will never lie to Bayelsans, I had a commercial loan stock of N20 billion which I was hoping I will be able to finish paying by May that year and I would have finished paying it if I was there by then. Now, the government of Jonathan owed contractors N111 billion and by the time I was leaving the contractor debt rose to N207 billion. Let's face it, you are given contract, contracts may have been given by the Jonathan administration and the term of contractor may have been given by the previous government. It is a continuous government but you keep talking about this loan stock, as money owed by the state. You keep saying I owed so much; most of that money they were talking about was contractor’s debts. If they are truthful they will tell you. I inherited a debt of N111 billion and what Dickson inherited from me was N207 contractors’ debt. I am sure that if I take over today the contractor debts would have gone up above N400 billion. I would not go out and announce that Dickson owes so much that is to somebody that does not understand economics. The loan stock that I owed commercial banks, (N20 billion) which Dickson could have paid off in the first three months because it was when he came in that was when fuel subsidy was particularly removed. There was more money, in fact in that year we budgeted N50 billion extra because we were expecting more money to the state and Dickson got more than N50 billion extra. I keep telling you, the facts are there! The first year I got into government I received N89 billion from the federation account, the first time Dickson came, he recovered N191 billion. Second I received N154 billion, Dickson received N216 billion. The third year I received N106 billion, Dickson received 156 billion. So what is he talking about? Now, he is taxing the civil servants, which I did not do, so he is getting more money. Now, he says he has been paying N20 billion commercial loan from 2012 to now? So I did not leave any debt that Dickson is trying to pay, the debt stock that I left (20 billion) would have been paid off in the first few months if he was serious because any government comes and inherits both assets and liabilities. That’s how government is run. I have the figure; I have the facts that I can present to Bayesians.