Douye Diri is the new Governor of Bayelsa State. In this interactive session with journalists, he spoke about the plans of his administration, his victory at the Supreme Court, efforts to reconcile the people of the state, among other issues. Akani Alaka was there. Excerpts
On urgent things that his administration will do in Bayelsa
The truth is that I am part and parcel of the restoration government, so I don’t need anybody to tell me where I should begin. And so, taking handover notes from my predecessor was like a formal ceremony for me. I already know where to start; the issues have been identified. In one hundred days, we will invite you over to see what we have been able to do. Principally, my administration will focus on the economy. The local economy is not vibrant. So, we will look for every means to create a local economy that will be vibrant and move our people away from being a civil servants’ state to being oriented towards agriculture and business. Again, my predecessor has done so much on that and on education. There have been several awards for him even nationally on education. As I keep saying, no society can grow beyond its level of education. So, investment in education will continue to form the bedrock and bulwark of our administration. We are very sure of what we are going to do. Yenagoa, generally, streetlight is the problem and before my predecessor left, he had already awarded contract for the streetlights in Yenagoa. We are going to follow it up and ensure that government fulfills its obligation to ensure that that is part of our own 100 days in office. There are several other activities that we have identified.
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Forgery allegation against Bayelsa deputy governor-elect
Let me correct this. We didn’t take a forgery case to court. What my deputy and I took to court was giving false information to INEC. And so, the onus was on him to prove why he had those multiple names from his primary, secondary, university, master’s degree, multiple names. I remember when we are still in Appeal or trial court, our lawyer, Tayo Oyetibo, asked him if he was a woman and even if you are a woman, you need to be very promiscuous – from one husband to another so that you can achieve that level of change of names he has achieved. And the defence by his lawyers was that “this man has been using this name for many years, nobody has challenged him. Why are you coming to challenge him now?” And my lawyer replied that if somebody has been stealing for 30 years and he was not caught and the day he is now caught, you are saying we should leave him alone? So, we didn’t institute a case of forgery. We instituted a case of false information and that is against the Electoral Act. And so, those people who are basing their argument on forgery, maybe they have to take him on on forgery. We have succeeded with our own case. Then, the question that my deputy governor has a similar case – let me make this clear; my deputy governor has no similar case. There is no case about my deputy governor. My deputy govenor’s name was mispelt in his National Youth Service exemption certificate. And you know that the right thing to do is not to go to the notary public to go and swear to an affidavit the way the other man did. My deputy governor, who is also a lawyer, promptly wrote to the NYSC and told them that “the certificate you gave to me is not my certificate because my name has been misspelt, please, could you correct my name?” And then, NYSC promptly issued a new certificate to my deputy governor. I have sighted it. So, they (APC) are already where they are and are looking for every straw to see how they can pull us down. But God has brought us in and no one can bring us down. So, my deputy governor did not have a similar case to that of APC. In fact, my deputy governor has instituted a legal case before we were sworn in, demanding damages of N200 million. But, unfortunately, that case cannot even continue because my deputy governor now enjoys immunity. Nobody can take him to court and he cannot take anybody to court. So, that case is dead on arrival.
Weaning Bayelsa from dependence on monthly allocation from Abuja
As a parliamentarian in the House of Representatives, we wanted our constitution to be amended. Where everyone comes with a plate to the centre in the name of FAAC allocation is why our country is not growing. And until we overcome that and we embrace fiscal federalism where federating units will approximate political powers, fiscal powers and then pay taxes to the centre, we will continue to be in this situation. I remember I gave an interview when our bill was defeated on the floor- we tried to amend the Land Use Act which gave the Federal Government the right to use our land as if the land doesn’t belong to us – that is injustice and I was fighting all of that. I think that interview went viral where I said, land at best, belongs to the people. It belonged to families, it belonged to the local government in our own African setting. And so, I don’t see how the Federal Government will now come to claim the right to things beneath the land. That’s an injustice and we will continue to fight against it. I have started fighting that when I was at the House of Representatives and now that I am a governor, I will continue to fight for it. And we will try to diversify our sources of income and that’s why we are preaching agriculture, trade and investment. We want peace in Bayelsa, because it is only in a peaceful environment that you can appeal to investors to come to Bayelsa State. That’s why from the beginning, all my address has been about reconciliation, we have to reconcile, because as a people, we must know that whether we belong to PDP or APC, the number one thing is that we are Bayelsans and Nigerians – APC or PDP are vehicles that we all use to assume positions, to sell our ideas to the people. And so, our number one agenda again is to ensure that we diversify our economy, even though we are the producer of the golden egg in Nigeria. Bayelsa is very rich in natural resources and we will attract investors to Nigeria.
Reconciliation with Timi Alaibe
Timi Alaibe is my brother. And not only is he my brother, I served Timi Alaibe for about 10 years politically, and you know, in politics, the only permanent thing is your interest. And for me, I have a background of the theory of politics and so, I am equally influenced by my theoretical background of politics. And so, at a point, my interest and his interest can no longer co-exist, so I walked away. That’s history. We had the primaries, I emerged as the winner of that primaries. Timi Alaibe’s agents signed the results of that primaries and he was the only one, who took me to court out of 21 other aspirants. My chief of staff, that I just appointed, was one of those 21 persons, who contested the primaries with me. As we speak, the secretary to government, that I just appointed, who was the Speaker of the State House of Assembly was one of those who contested the primaries with me. For me, politics is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. And so, that case is there. I am from a political party. And just as you are concerned, my party is also concerned and we are making frantic efforts to resolve it as an internal issue, as a family of PDP. You should also ask yourself, since that time, the matter has been in the cooler – by now it is supposed to have moved up to the Supreme Court because that matter was there, even before we instituted this matter against APC that finally got to the Supreme Court. And so, I believe that we will have ways of addressing it. Timi Alaibe is one person that you cannot push over in the politics of Bayelsa. He is one person who we believe that working with us, we will move Bayelsa forward. So, let me use this opportunity to call on him – my very good brother to sheath his sword and let us chart a new direction for the development of Bayelsa State.
On violence that followed his declaration as Governor
You see that’s the marked difference between the APC and the PDP in Bayelsa State. You will recall that two days to the general election, we went to campaign in a place called Nembe, the Nembe local government areas headquarters and my supporters were murdered in cold blood. There were no reactions of counter killings from my local government or my deputy’s local government. We held back our people and said two wrongs cannot make a right. They killed and we never reacted the same way. Now, this is a court judgment, a Supreme Court judgment, if you respect the rule of law, knowing that the Supreme Court is the final point of all cases in Nigeria and you are the party in power. But the next thing you do is to go and destroy property – my house was torched, my vehicles were torched, the former governor’s residence was torched, the judiciary was torched – as we speak, they have just brought a memo for the replacement of the generating set that was burnt and that is going to cost the state huge sums of money. One of our representatives in the House of Reps, his library was torched. Several other property of PDP members were torched. Is that the kind of government that we would have had? But for us, we have started with reconciliation and we will still appeal to them that violence is an ill-wind that does not blow any community any good and nobody has the monopoly of violence. But we will not be pushed to that level.
On alleged threats from Niger Delta Avengers, following his declaration as governor
That is coming from the pockets of those APC people. There is nobody like that. On Friday before I left for Abuja, I met with all former presidents of Ijaw Youth Council and all former youth leaders of Ijaw nation – not only from Bayelsa – from Rivers, Edo Ondo, Akwa Ibom – and they were very unanimous, they even addressed the press, throwing their support behind this government. And do not be deceived – I’m not not from Niger Republic, neither am I a Ghanaian. I am a Nigerian from Bayelsa State and a former Organising National Secretary of Ijaw National Congress, the foremost ethnic body of the Ijaw people. Sometimes, they will come and tell this story to create some aura of fear. The Ijaw people are very happy with the court judgment and Bayelsans are prepared to work with our government. How have we addressed the security threat? Even before I resumed, the security commanders in the state imposed a three-day curfew. And after I resumed on the 14th, at the expiration of the three days, I met with security commanders, we evaluated and assessed the curfew and it was very effective and we decided that the curfew should be extended. So, Bayelsa is peaceful. In spite of all the provocations, we are extending an olive branch to them. As I said, when there is darkness, we give them light. So, we are very sure that Bayelsa will continue to be peaceful and government will continue to do its bid to improve the standard of living of Bayelsans.
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As a miracle governor
If this one is not a miracle to you, I don’t know what other type of miracle you want to look at because at a point, everybody had given up. We filed a petition in the tribunal. We are the only people who filed. The others who filed went and withdrew their cases believing that the APC had taken over and APC met with them and agreed with them. We are the only party that APC did not approach, because we know what they have done, they knew what they had done. We went as far as looking at the ballot papers. The ballot papers they claimed that they have 120,000 votes in Southern Ijaw, we went round and we didn’t see it. If you see the volume of ballot papers, you will now know the fraud that was perpetrated in that election. By what I got as report from the inspectors from our party, the 120,000 votes from Southern Ijaw, were not more than 30,000 or 35,000 votes by the ballot papers that were seen. But we won’t go to that again because we are already on seat. In Ogbia Local Government, they claimed that they had 58,000 votes, the CTC of the ballot papers were not more than 15,000 votes. So, when we say these people are fraudulent, we are speaking with facts, but that is behind us now. So, for us, this is a miracle governor because the only place we have to go was the court. And there was this other matter of APC versus APC, which was thrown out on Tuesday by the same panel and they were applauding the panel for throwing away that matter for being statute-barred, they commended Justice Odili and the panelist. But on Thursday, the hammer of God came. So, that’s why I called myself a miracle governor.
