Chief Nathan Egba served as commissioner for Information and Strategy in the Timipire Sylva administration and is presently the Director of Media and Publicity for the Sylva/Igiri Campaign Organisation of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Bayelsa State.

In this interview, Egba explains the difficulties of the Serikae Dickson government and rebuffs assertions by the APC’s Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Timi Frank that the party has lost Bayelsa with Timipre Sylva as its candidate.

He also dismissed the speculations making the rounds that the APC is relying on federal might to swing the polls in its favour just as he described as a non issue the gale of endorsements for the incumbent governor, which according to him did not translate to victory at the poll for President Goodluck Jonathan, who enjoyed such endorsements prior to his loss of the presidential election. Excerpts:

By Samuel Oyadongha

How do you rate the acceptance of your candidate in the state?

The APC has become a party to beat. The sensitization efforts to Nembe, Sagbama, Brass, and others areas of the state showed that the wind of expected change from slavery and the oppression of the PDP has caught up with the people. Many decampees from the administration of Dickson showed wide acceptance. As at the last count, many of the decampees are from the present administration.

At Toru-Orua community in Sagbama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, the people accepted the All Progressives Congress, APC, as the party of choice to help liberate the people.

The people of the community, the country-home of Governor Seriake Dickson treated the Sylva /Igiri campaign train to a colourful reception with a carnival to show their love for the change party. The people of the community could not hold their excitement as they danced and waved their brooms, symbol of the APC and sang songs of liberation and emancipation saying” they are very happy that the APC has finally come to redeem them.

But major stakeholders including traditional Rulers, State House Assembly members, Local Government Chairmen and others have endorsed Governor Seriake Dickson as their choice for the Governorship election. How would the APC handle this?

Sylva and Dickson

You will recall that before the presidential election, there were spates of endorsements in Bayelsa State. Every group that endorsed the former President was forced to endorse the governor, Seriake Dickson. They did it from Local Government Councils to the State House of Assembly. Group by group they endorsed him. And now, there is another round of endorsements. The simple question is, have those rounds of endorsement expired? And if these ones have expired, what is the life span of these new endorsements? Are these ones going to expire before the governorship elections? You can see that these endorsements are exercise in futility and vanity. And as you know, vanity upon vanity is vanity. It is just all a charade. So, these endorsements are for television. They have no value.

There appeared to be a crack in your party as the Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Timi Frank recently slammed Sylva over what he called “selfishness” and “lacking proper consultation”. Is he right?

I have to say that the Sylva/Igiri campaign is very disappointed at Timi Frank’s outburst. Timi Frank is a true friend of our flag bearer, Chief Timipre Sylva. It is sad that he could make such comment about the party and Chief Sylva. We had expected that, even if the outcome of the primaries of the party, did not meet his expectation, he should have cued into the party’s acceptance of the process. If he is a true party man, he should have cued in behind the party flag bearer. But with what we saw was of his outburst, one begins to question his loyalty to the party.

Be that as it may, the campaign committee wants to say that his claim against Chief Timipre Sylva on lacking proper consultation is not true. That he is not carrying everyone along is false. Every other aspirant within the party is working closely with Chief Timipre Sylva. Senator Felix Oborop is one of the members of the Elders Council of the Campaign team. One of the other aspirants, Chief Dikivie Ikiogha, has just been announced as the Chairman of the Reconciliation Committee of the Campaign.

This clearly showed that the aspirants during the last primaries are working with Timipre Sylva. Even Timi Alaibe is a member of the National Campaign of the Party. Alaibe, who Timi Frank supported, is fully behind Sylva. Alaibe even sent a statement from London declaring his full support for Sylva and that anyone that claims to be his true supporter should do same.

Continuous process

One begins to wonder what Timi Frank is talking about. In a nutshell, the entire gamut of Timi Frank’s statement does not hold water. Consultation is a continuous process.

How would you react to the recent defection of Alaibe’s loyalists, Chief Alex Ekiotenne and Senator Brambaifa? They claimed to have been deceived by the APC?

If they said that it is most unfortunate. I spoke with Alaibe about these elders and Alaibe told me that he was indeed surprised at their action. And that Chief Ekiotenne and Senator Brambaifa actually came to meet him and convinced him to come and stand for the APC Governorship primaries. Who is deceiving who? And like I said elsewhere, as far as the APC is concerned, when these elders defected into the APC months ago, it was the PDP that was kind enough to advise that the APC should not take them serious.

The PDP said that these elders possess no electoral value and secondly that they are selfish and greedy. These were the words of the PDP and that they have insatiable quest for money. These were the words of the PDP. All they are after is money. We were kind enough to put them at arm’s length. This was why the APC leadership failed to bring them to the mainstream of the party.

What surprises us about the whole defection was that after PDP itself advised us not to give these individuals concern, it was surprising that they could not take the same advice that they gave us. We just want to remind them that the advice that they gave about these elders on how to be careful about them is true. We expected them to take their own advice. Because we are at the height of campaigns, the PDP started celebrating these people. The defection is of no electoral value. Whether these people are in APC or in PDP it would not affect the outcome of the election.