The Sun News On-line/politics

An Ijaw youth leader and president of Ijaw Media Forum, Elder Asu Beks, has given a sensational account of how a rift between Vice President Goodluck Jonathan and the ex-governor of Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva, brought the state to its knees in the last one year.

Beks, in an interview with Daily Sun in Lagos recently, deplored what he called, the vice-president’s ‘partisanship,’ saying, "there is no way you can be vice president and at the same time, be governor."

He advised Jonathan to hands off the politics of Bayelsa State, as the state prepares for a re-run election soon.
He further fields questions on the government of Sylva and the politics of the state.

He speaks.
Re-run election and Sylva
It is a very sad development because the vice president is in PDP and the ex-governor is also in PDP. There is no basis for a change of candidate. Some of us are having the impression that the vice president has become so meddlesome. If we look back to the problems in Adamawa State, when Alhaji Abubakar Atiku was still there as vice-president, these were some of the things that started to work against Atiku, and people began to have the impression that he was becoming ambitious. If you are the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, you are not the vice president of Bayelsa.

You are the father of the state and so, if your children are in disagreement, it is your responsibility to call them to order, rather than taking sides. He has shown so much partisanship in the way he has conducted himself since he became vice president. There is no way you can be vice-president and at the same time be governor. So, let Goodluck hands off the politics of Bayelsa. Let him allow his governor to do what is right. Let him allow the governor to concentrate on governance, because his interference in the affairs of the state is distracting the governor.

In fact, he himself, the vice-president, is being distracted. And someone said that Mr. President is not very comfortable with this development. How many times have we seen Yar’Adua go to Katsina to say who should be local government and ward chairman? It is unnecessary. Everybody in Katsina is on his side and in this case, he is the father of the nation. In fact, Goodluck is the father of the entire South-South. He is the father of the entire Southern Nigeria, including the South-West and the South-East.

Sylva’s popularity
The man has come to correct the ills of the past and this is the price he must pay. Of course, you know how Murtala Muhammed died. He came to correct the past ills of Nigeria. So, it is a supreme price for anyone who wants to fight endemic corruption in a state like Bayelsa, where in the past, most contractors were paid in cash.

Three hundred million Naira, One billion Naira, Two billion Naira, and so on, paid in cash! Government officials, commissioners, the governor, prefer to pay cash so that they can collect their money. They don’t want any commitment. They don’t want contractors issuing them cheques. They don’t want any form of third party dealing and Timipre Sylva set up an effective due process system because he has one of the best finance commissioners in Nigeria today, a seasoned economist. All projects are properly evaluated. You don’t just walk up to government and drop a proposal and land it, just like that.

Endless crises in Bayelsa
It’s the scramble for the soul of the state, the scramble for oil money. Oil is evil. Anywhere there is oil in the world; there is trouble. The oil money in Bayelsa has made most of our leaders go crazy, and for as long as we continue to depend on oil, my brother, there will be no end to this scramble.

Sylva’s best achievement
As we speak, for the first time in the history of Bayelsa State, you can now walk up to your tap, put your bucket and have water. It never happened in the 11 years history of the state. The taps were not functioning. Also, there are 43 road projects going on right now in Yenagoa. If you visited Bayelsa State before, you realise that when you close from work, you park your car in Mile 2 and then you trek to your house somewhere in Mile 3 because of accessibility. People were packing their cars on the express roads and will trek kilometres to get to their houses.

Some will even climb on top of ‘pako,’ (wood plank) because we didn’t have access roads. He has also made sure that the senatorial road projects that were in progress, started by Goodluck Jonathan, were sustained. That way, the state capital, Yenagoa has been linked to the three senatorial zones by road.
And then, of course, there is the Yenagoa Industrial City Park project, for which the state government is now going to partner with the Niger Delta Development Committee (NDDC). In terms of youth empowerment, hundreds of our sons are somewhere in India undergoing IT training programmes. So, he has touched so many lives in so short a time.

Message before by-election
Nobody should take the law into his hands. We should learn from experience of what happened at the tribunal, and that elections are not won by rigging or thuggery. The only way you can win election is to go to the booth and vote for a candidate of your choice and then wait for the result. Thuggery does not produce results. If not, a state like Bayelsa that is over 90 per cent PDP, should not have found itself in the mess it is now because people were trying to change the hands of justice, and they ended up being caught up.