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.
You sound betrayed.
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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