Former Governor of Bayelsa State and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Timipre Sylva, in this interview with
ADELANI ADEPEGBA of PUNCH, talks about his relationship with the Peoples Democratic Party, President Jonathan and how he betrayed him.
- What is your relationship with President Goodluck Jonathan and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha like?
I would say it’s neither here nor there. Sometimes, you think you are
very good friends or brothers with some people, but it turns out that
you are not really brothers or friends. That’s the way it has always
been. I sometimes feel like the biblical Joseph that was sold by his
brothers. That’s actually the way I feel sometimes, when I think about
the way I was treated by my own people — the people I
call my brothers.
Yes, I feel betrayed by them; by President Jonathan especially.
- You were removed as a governor. What was your offence and how did it feel?
Till today, I am still trying to know what my offence was. At that time,
the party chairman, Abubakar Baraje, now a member of the All
Progressives Party like me, said I knew the offence I committed and he
apparently didn’t know. It seemed it was only I that knew the offence I
committed. I don’t know the offence I committed up till today. In truth,
there was no offence — somebody just wanted me out of the way because
he was afraid of my rising profile and he decided to move against me.
That’s all.
- But why would the person be afraid of your rising profile? Did he see you as a threat?
This is politics. It’s about space. When you occupy a certain space and
people see that they may not have the kind of headroom within that space
for them to be active, they want to get you out of the way, especially,
if they have the means of keeping you out of the way. Jonathan was
President, he wanted me out of his way and he got me out of his way.
- Beyond politics, do you think he had personal issues with you?
I wouldn’t really know, but I would think so because what they did was
beyond politics. They didn’t just remove me, they committed moral
murder. They almost killed me morally by trying to brand me as a very
corrupt person and tried to charge me for corruption. They also went
ahead to molest my family and me endlessly. At some point, a lot of
people were afraid for my life. That cannot be politics. It must be
beyond that. President Jonathan even accused me of wanting to kill him
and then I was to be charged for treason. What does that mean? If I was
convicted for treason, the punishment would have been death; that means
President Jonathan wanted me dead. So at that point, I became very
afraid for my life. It could not have been just politics, definitely.
- What do you have to say about the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission investigation and prosecution?
Clearly, it was a witch-hunt. If you look at the status of the case
today, every accused person has been discharged and acquitted. The
Accountant-General of the state has been discharged; the Commissioner of
Finance, who was also arraigned with me, has been discharged, leaving
only me, because I was the one they wanted. No governor has access to
the treasury without the Accountant-General and I am not a signatory to
the state account. Therefore, if all the signatories to the account have
been discharged, then why am I still being prosecuted? Of course, they
wanted me and they know that the charges cannot convict me, so they want
to keep the case in court to give the impression that I am being tried
for corruption. As soon as my name came up for the very temporary job of
transition committee, you saw all kinds of articles: ‘Oh, he is being
tried for corruption,’ ‘Why did you give him this kind of position?’
They just want to keep the case alive so that I would never get anything
in this country, by their own reckoning.
- What is your relationship with the First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan like?
I don’t have a relationship with her other than her being my First Lady
at the time. There is no relationship. I mean, there is no need for any.
On a lighter note, she is a married woman.
- Some believe you betrayed the Niger Delta region by working against the region’s foremost son. What’s your reaction to this?
Today, I think a lot of those people think differently. I kept telling
them: first, I was forced to do what I was doing. I was forced out of
the party. I didn’t have any party to go to, I still have a political
career and I needed space to pursue my career. Thus, I moved to the APC.
I believed that Gen. (Muhammadu) Buhari was going to do a better job. I
actually mentioned it to a lot of my Niger Delta brothers that there is
no way we can hinge the future of the whole Niger Delta on the destiny
of one person. President Jonathan is from the Niger Delta, but his
destiny is not equal to the destiny of the Niger Delta. We still have a
life after the Jonathan presidency and we should think about this and
caution ourselves. The kind of language that was coming out of the Niger
Delta from misguided elements were in bad taste in some cases and I
thought we should think about our future within Nigeria beyond the
Jonathan presidency and today, that day has come. I think everybody
knows that what I did had a lot of merit; some traditional rulers phoned
me immediately after the election to thank me for the roles I played.
They said but for the roles I played, the Niger Delta and Bayelsa State,
especially, would probably have been shut out of this political space
completely. A lot of them really think differently now, but it’s
unfortunate that many of them were living in the euphoria of having the
Presidency. When you even sit down with most of them and ask, ‘what has
President Jonathan done for the Niger Delta?’ they can’t tell you
anything he has done. It was all sentiment. Of course, I couldn’t be
moved by sentiment, apart from what Jonathan did to me personally, if he
had developed the Niger Delta, I probably would have been persuaded by
his performance. But in a situation where I saw practically nothing in
the Niger Delta, I felt there was no need carrying on with that.
- Are you saying Jonathan disappointed the Niger Deltans?
He did, every Niger Deltan knows and a few people have said it and I
don’t want to repeat what others have said. Niger Delta is actually in a
worse situation today than we have ever been in our history because we
have got nothing from this Presidency. Therefore, Niger Delta people,
including myself, feel very betrayed.
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