By Musa Omale

 

Last Saturday, January 28, Governor Henry Seriake Dickson hit 51 years, having been born on that day in 1966, in the riverine community of Toru-Urua, in Sagbama Local Government of Bayelsa State. Dickson’s humble beginning is reminiscent of that of great Nigerian leaders, like Major Isaac Boro, Sir Ahamdu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, Melford Okilo, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and others. He was born in the creeks and lived in the creeks.

Growing up was very tough, as he suffered deprivations, environmental degradation; saw a vehicle only at 18 years in far away Patani after he had paddled canoe to the waterside, dropped out of school twice for lack of funds to pay school fees and joined his mother to carry out menial jobs to make ends meet!

All of these have influenced his almost infallible political philosophy if you like, call it the Wood Cabin Lincolnian experience so much so that the Countryman Governor has vowed not to allow any Bayelsan experience the same harrowing experience he had growing up! And he seems to have forestalled this through his Free and Compulsory Education Scheme, Social Security Scheme to the Aged, by changing the governance culture of the state through the enthronement of transparency and accountability backed by law and provision of critical infrastructure by linking all Bayelsa communities with roads and bridges so as to bring modernity to rural areas.

As Dickson, the Tarakiri High Chief marked his 51st birthday, my take away is that with the likes of Dickson in the saddle, there is a possibility for the emergence of a functional Nigeria.  

The doctrine of a possible Nigeria is a postulation that seeks to aggregate the totality of the desired and expected exemplary statesmanship. It is the quest to see leadership, especially post-civil war Nigerian political managers and elite, who seek at all levels of involvement, a Nigeria that is different from that, which was bequeathed to us by pre-civil war participants to whom Nigeria merely meant both a theoretical and practical mill of gaining needless advantages through ethno-religious and socio-political paradigms. It is a philosophy that is averse to the overly selfish materialistic objectives of our rampantly corrupt elitism against the dire need of a resurgent populist tendency. It is this philosophy that inspires Dickson to assemble a mini Nigeria in his Restoration Government; appointing non-Bayelsans into governance to drive governance. For the governor, what is critical is how to deepen democracy and unite our country by getting the job done without fear or favour and not people’s state of origin as has become the norm in amongst public servants.

 It is a doctrine that emanates from the fundamental African political philosophy that a leader, doubtless, must hail from a possible ethnic stock, yet carries a nationalism that is trans-generational and rallies the effort of his people towards a superior nationalism that has his ethno-nationalistic agitations inclusive in the aggregated forward linkages of the larger enclave/ entity to which his sub-entity is a part. It tilts towards a tendency that in the constant battle to renew Nigeria, where importantly the base necessity and struggle is to undermine public corruption as the major potent force against the idea of a possible Nigeria, where such examples geometrically decrease by the day, it is still possible to produce leaders that are compartmentally above the scratch.

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That where the debacle increases to the level that lesser thieves accuse bigger thieves of corruption given the lack of access to plumier routes by the former and the latter’s resort to primordial protections when faced with the un-often rabidity of the law, we could still rise to the occasion by the actions of a few credible leaders. That in the unending debacles of properly fixing Nigeria, a possible Nigeria is still determinable by the sheer selfless leadership of our leaders as both local and national examples that must necessarily become putative to our collective national consciousness.

It is for the above and many more reasons that we celebrate this rare gift from the Creeks on his birthday. He is a standard believer, example and practitioner of the necessity of a possible Nigeria. His conduct as a public servant connotes a possible Nigeria. From his austere beginnings as a country boy in the back ends of  Toru-Urua, a rural Bayelsa community through his stint with the police force and eventual triumph over the vicissitudes of life through hard work to becoming an attorney replicates a never dying-spirit. As a prominent member of the then most progressive opposition party, the AD, holding forth variously as its legal adviser and formidably as the Bayelsa State chapter chairman, he caused the most unbelievable electoral upset of the time, winning his entire senatorial zone, House of Representatives seat in Bayelsa West and two House of Assembly seats in Brass to a party that was considered a negative external infiltration in an era that they could have been rigged out in seconds.

In the spirit of a coalescing political necessity, he was drawn to the PDP where he eventually served as Attorney General of the state and later a two-term member of the House Representatives, where he carved a niche for himself as one of the best lawmakers.

His infrastructure regime and integrity quotient is unmatched in the entire South-South region in consideration of the monumental edifices with matched skilled manpower to boot from the education, health, rural roads linkages network to urban renewal efforts. As an avid believer of the rights of the minorities, he was conspicuous as the national legal adviser of the Ijaw National Congress. It is to the resilience of his character and homeboy principles that he overwhelmingly won the gubernatorial election of Bayelsa in 2012 and the hotly contested reelection in 2016.

Before his entrance as governor, with the greatest amount of respect for his predecessors, Bayelsa State was a federal allocation sharing pot-let without enviable infrastructure and human empowerment outlets for the massive obstructive youth of the state. Creditably, Governor Dickson led the massive enduring landmark legacy projects that have become the entrenched practice of state policy.

In a region where elections equate wars, he constantly maintained that his ambition should never diminish the worth of Bayelsans talk less of their lives. His re-election was the first in the repeat battles of party supremacy in the aftermath of the 2015 general elections where the federal might and the APC machine were acutely resisted by the people; mostly by women and youths, who stood gallantly in the face of intimidating   Armoured Tanks to defend their votes for the Countryman Governor. Unlike other South-South election experiences, his election and others under his guide as chief executive of the state did not result in first range wars.

• Comrade Omale, a public commentator, wrote from Otukpo, Benue State, via [email protected].