By Clifford Ndujihe, Deputy Political Editor
Bayelsa State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Nathan Egba during a visit to the Lagos Corporate Headquarters of Vanguard Newspapers, last week, spoke among others on the politics of Bayelsa, why Governor Timipre Sylva is preparing for the 2011 polls and how to ensure credible elections in 2011.

What do you make of the second amendment to the 1999 constitution and fears that security could scuttle the 2011 polls?

That is a constitutional matter. Once the National Assembly and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC have agreed and the law has been passed, there is nothing ordinary Nigerians can do except to follow and ensure that credible elections are conducted this time around.

Security is a major problem for everybody in terms of what we are seeing. A few days ago a large cache of arms were discovered at the ports and the kind of things people witness across the country, kidnapping, etc give cause for worry.

The security agencies need to be up and doing to take care of the situation because we are in difficult times and if we are not careful and conduct elections that are not internationally acceptable, there will be credibility problems for the government that is coming.

Nathan Egba...upbeat about Sylva's chances

Apart from security what other measures can we adopt to ensure credible elections?

We have to follow constitutional provisions and educate the electorate and the people to imbibe democratic culture. I want to refer to what happened in Bayelsa State penultimate Friday when Mr. President visited the state and in the course of making a speech the governor experienced some distraction from political opponents.

That way of abusing, heckling and making noise when somebody in the calibre of a governor is speaking is not in tune with democratic norms and conduct. If anybody for whatever reason is not happy with the governor, he has to follow laid down procedures to vent his anger.

If the man is not popular they also have the opportunity at the polls to vote him out. To heckle and throw stones and do things that border on criminality is a dangerous trend. If this is copied across the country then politicians and individuals that are highly placed will be in trouble.

These are the dangerous things that we face. We must learn not take negative examples from different places. Heckling and abusing people is not the culture of Ijaw people.

At this time, Bayelsans in particular have a duty to conduct themselves in a manner that the rest of the country will be happy with us because Nigerians have given us a unique opportunity by making our son president of the country.

We must learn to appreciate the rest of the country and show that we are worthy of the honour Nigerians have bestowed on us.

What led to the sad incident during President Goodluck Jonathan’s visit to his home state?

We believe that some political opponents of the governor targeted that occasion to see if they could embarrass the governor in the presence of Mr. President, his colleagues and Nigerians. The whole idea is make it look as if the governor is unpopular at home.

Unfortunately, the whole thing backfired because it made people to start asking ‘what is it really that this people want?’ Remember that when Dr. Jonathan was nominated as the running mate to late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, it was the same Bayelsans that went and bombed his private residence.

At a time we ought to be happy and celebrate that our son was being lifted to that height, we tried to pull him down and made him look unpopular. During Nigeria’s 50th independence anniversary, our son, Mr. President was celebrating with the rest of the country, fellow Niger Deltans, as being alleged, went to bomb Abuja to paint an atmosphere that this Niger Delta son is not popular among his people.

All of this is not true. That is the way we situate what took place in Bayelsa. We just have a way of ridiculing our leaders before outsiders knowing full well that on ground these leaders are popular and well accepted among the common people.

It is a very unfortunate trend but we know that majority of Bayelsa people are very warm, nice and peace-loving people.

You linked the incident to political opponents, does the government know them?
Definitely. It goes to the very beginning of Chief Sylva’s governorship. When Dr. Jonathan was elevated to the position of vice presidential candidate of PDP, the governorship slot became open.

A lot of people angled for the post but Sylva became the PDP candidate. Right from that moment, some people have not been happy because they felt they should be the governorship candidate and not Sylva.

That was the background to the problem he was having with the former deputy governor, who at some point, could not give the requisite respect to the governor; causing friction between them until he was impeached by the House of Assembly.

So, the government knows those who took part in the incident and the information has been passed to the security agencies.

What is your reaction to allegations that Governor Sylva has not made efforts to ensure genuine reconciliation of all stakeholders and carry them along?

There are some people that are almost implacable. He has gone out of his way to try and bring everybody into the system. Before, majority of the National Assembly members were at loggerheads with the governor but the day he was going to submit his PDP nomination form to the INEC, they all accompanied.

If there was no kind of reconciliation, how can all the National Assembly members accompany him to INEC to show that they are all fully behind his candidature?

Bayelsa is one of the best states in terms of income par capita of her citizens compared to other states in Nigeria. What accounts for this?

It has to do with production figures of oil and gas in the state and the fact that the population of the state is quite small. So if you place the production rate side-by-side the population, you tend to get a per capita income that makes it look as one of the highest in the country.

But then there are other factors like the terrain, which at the end of the day, make funds insufficient. If what you get you put it back into development, you will discover that what is required to develop the area is far more than what is required to develop other areas of the country.

In spite of the challenge of terrain, what has Governor Sylva been able to achieve in the last three-and-a-half years?

The governor has been able to deliver a lot of democracy dividends to the people. For instance, soon after coming to power, he started work on 52 internal roads. In the whole Yenagoa, there were practically no internal roads.

The 52 internal roads are practically finished and close to 40 are fully ready and in use. In fact, in his recent visit to the state, President Jonathan  commissioned about 10 of the roads. And the roads are of high standard and have made life easy for residents of Yenagoa.

In terms of governance, he has instituted critical pillars to ensure sustainability of good governance. He introduced e-governance and due process bureau, which means whatever you do in government, you must pass through due process. The bureau must satisfy that what you are doing meets international standard before the governor can approve.

In education, he has sent many Bayelsans out on international scholarships  to places like Malaysia, Ukraine, Norway, Sweden and India to do different courses including vocational courses.

Over 200 Bayelsans had gone to India for IT training and are back and are being employed in the civil service and deployed to different parts of the state.

He has also improved facilities at the Niger Delta University. Before, a number of key courses were not accredited by the National Universities Commission, NUC.

For instance, Law, Medicine and some courses in Engineering. But now, the Law Faculty is fully accredited and the law graduates are recognised and being admitted into various law schools across the country.

The same goes for the medical graduates. He has just established a new college of education. We didn’t have one before. This is to create the critical mass of teachers for the secondary school population in the state.

Bayelsa is known as a one-city state. After Yenagoa, no other city. What is the state government doing to change this status?

Bayelsa is practically a one-city state because even Yenagoa, as of now, still needs serious development. So if Yenagoa itself has not been developed to a fairly reasonable standard and you go to develop other cities, you will discover that you may be dissipating energy and scarce resources and not achieve a tangible result.

There are a few other towns with potentials of being made cities. For instance, there are Ogbia Town, Sagbama, Odi, Kaiama, Amasoma, Brass, etc but Yenagoa is till work in progress.

So if you abandon Yenagoa and start developing other places, you may discover that Yenagoa will not get anywhere and those other places will not get anywhere. So, the thinking of government is to continue to focus on Yenagoa, to bring it up to certain standard before going to other places.

Don’t you think that this policy could breed disharmony as the other neglected areas are also oil-producing and need development?

There is nothing like that. Bayelsa is one. Yenagoa is the capital city for everybody. It not as if developing Yenagoa means developing it for a certain set of people. Developing Yenagoa means developing everybody.

If we leave Yenagoa the way it is we are not helping ourselves because no matter where you go to develop now, you will not develop the place properly because the funding is not even there. In any case, there is no way you can ignore or totally abandon Yenagoa anyway because it is the capital city.

You have to do the roads, ensure that water gets to individual homes, ensure that there is power at all times. That is why the government has invested massively in new Russian turbines, which were commissioned by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

Governor Sylva was one of those caught up on the issue of whether or not their tenures will end on 2011. How far has he gone to retain his mandate beyond May 29, 2011?

That matter is double-edged. As far the governor and his supporters want a judicial interpretation of him having to go for election next year, there is also the need for us not to fall foul of the law by the governor not presenting himself for election only to be told that ‘an election has been conducted and you did not participate so someone else has been returned as governor.’

Yes, he is in court seeking judicial interpretation of that implication, at the same time because he does not want to be caught unawares, he is also preparing himself actively for election next year.

What are his chances?

Absolutely bright. We don’t have any opposition in Bayelsa State. As far as other parties are concerned, there is none. The only opposition he may expect is within PDP. And within PDP, we have been seeing posters but nobody has come to Bayelsa to say ‘I’m standing for election’ up till now.

Don’t you think that lack of opposition is not good for development of Bayelsa as no one will keep the government on its toes?

There is nothing we can do. We cannot flog people out of their houses to stand against the governor or force anybody on Bayelsans. It is not as if people are not standing.

About 12 people are standing for election but all of them do not even amount to one candidate as far as we are concerned because some of them are doing it to gain recognition, lobby for something or negotiate for one thing or the other not because they really fancy their chances or intend to really go to the field.

What is the way forward for Nigeria?

The way forward is to continue with democracy and to insist on rule of law and fairness especially among the federating units because if there were no fairness and justice between us, friction will continue to exist and that will disturb the unity of this country.

There must be institutional fairness. We should share things equally to the various units so that everybody will be happy to belong to this country and be patriotic because patriotism is still missing in this country.