As the forthcoming governorship election in Bayelsa State approaches, with less than a month to go, interesting permutations are emerging as the gladiators prepare to display their much-touted rival strengths in contest.

By Lindsay Barret

There can hardly be any doubt that, even though more than a dozen hats have been thrown into the ring, only two major contestants have emerged; the incumbent PDP champion, Hon. Henry Seriake Dickson, and Chief Timipre Sylva, the former PDP Governor who is now the APC flagbearer.

A third contestant who has made enough noise to justify attention is the young independent businessman named Moses Siasia who has picked the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM). His highly entertaining radio campaign slots have piqued the interest of several listeners as he raises issues that are pertinent to the welfare and expectations of the younger voters.

Siasia has declared that previous leaders of the state have been too elitist and removed from the grassroots concerns of the people in their approach to public affairs and says that he intends to change this if he wins the election.

However as the campaigns have grown more visible it has emerged that even the more established political operatives are increasingly aware of the depth of widespread popular disenchantment with the record of past leadership.

Record of past leadership

While the Sylva support group in the state has adopted his new party’s call for fundamental change as its campaign focus, the incumbent, Dickson has successfully initiated a credible shift in style and method from past official campaigns. He has called on his campaign machine to be more community-based in its strategy, and has taken the lead in barnstorming tours of the wards in the various local government areas of the state.

Instead of promoting mega rallies in the LGA Headquarters, he has encouraged town hall meetings with community leaders and local interest groups especially among the youths and the women of the communities.

In these meetings the governor himself and some of his key cabinet members have engaged community members in a dialogue of interests and issues based on the communities’ own presentation of issues. Governor Dickson has been very vocal in reminding the people of their experience of the Sylva style of leadership in the past.

In a strategy that has been crafted by the cabinet and promoted effectively by the state Ministry of Information under its new commissioner, Barrister Esueme Dan Kikile, the governor has encouraged discussion between himself and community leaders as a means of explaining the government’s own challenges and problems instead of denying that these exist.

In-house seminars

The APC on the other hand has been holding in-house seminars in various communities where it endeavours to lay the blame for all the ills of society on the incumbent. In these discourses, the party focuses not so much on the past record of its flagbearer as it does on difficulties caused by the present day economic downturn.

In doing so, it taps into a fertile field of public disenchantment while diverting public attention away from the allegations of insecurity and cronyism in his tenure that have been levelled against its candidate by his erstwhile colleagues in the PDP.

Among the key campaign strategies that have developed as a result of the prevailing political circumstances in the state the mounting of effective community-based electioneering has proven to be the central theme.

It is noticeable that the selection of a running mate for Chief Sylva from the leaders of the Southern Ijaw LGA, the state’s largest and most populous, created a split within its ranks when, instead of choosing a prominent young activist member of the party, Sylva chose to resurrect the moribund career of Chief Wilberforce Agiri an elderly politician from the remote coastal community of Foropa.

The signal that this unexpected choice immediately sent out was that of expedience as it is clear that it was not based on the competence or experience of the chosen but rather on the perception that a community that has been neglected for past leadership opportunities was now being remembered.

By the same token, the choice of Senator Heineken Lokpobiri as the ministerial nominee from Bayelsa State is widely regarded in the state as being an electioneering ploy rather than genuinely based on the professional competence of the appointee. This perception is reinforced by the fact that Senator Lokpobiri has emerged as the effective head of the campaign team since his selection. He hails from Ekeremor LGA like Rep. Fred Agbedi, who is the Director General of the Dickson Campaign Organisation. Remarkably, both men have been close allies in the past.

Rhetoric in the campaigns

Under the circumstances it is not surprising that rhetoric in the campaigns at the community levels have sounded more like arguments in a family quarrel as the contestants exchange verbal volleys.

Unfortunately the APC has raised the stakes in this tournament with the seeming introduction of violent intimidation in some of its responses. This was most noticeable in recent events surrounding the aftermath of immensely successful PDP outings in Brass LGA, Sylva’s home base.

Brass, which is potentially one of the engine rooms of future economic growth for the whole of the South-South geo-political zone, has been touted by the Sylva machine as being his impregnable fiefdom.

However, when the Acting Chairman of the PDP, HRH Serena Dokubo-Spiff, who hails from the LGA as well, first led a sensitisation team to Twon-Brass, the LG Headquarters, the turn-out was overwhelming, but as soon as the team left town a group of thugs went around in the night ripping down PDP flags and posters. In spite of this, a fortnight later Governor Dickson himself led an LGA-wide two day visit to Brass at the same time that Sylva was in his hometown of Opuama holding in-house sessions with his family members and supporters. Again the PDP presence on the ground proved to be substantial. During this visit many communities in the area expressed their disenchantment with Sylva’s earlier performance and pledged to repeat the electoral victory that they had recorded in Governor Dickson’s favour in the last gubernatorial contest.

Again, hours after the PDP team had left, groups of miscreants sought out some of the PDP supporters and attacked them as part of a strategy that appears to be aimed at intimidating them to stay away from the polls.

It remains to be seen what outcome the new electioneering strategies will generate in the forthcoming elections, but it is clear that a sea-change has been generated in the politics of the state by Governor Dickson’s determined focus on community responses instead of the preservation of an elitist status quo in meeting the vehement challenge being mounted by the APC.