National Vice Chairman (South-South), All Progressives Congress, Chief Hilliard Eta has talked about the gains and losses of the APC in promoting internal democracy and party discipline.
On if he saw the victory in Bayelsa State governorship coming, he said it was obvious because of the dynamics of Bayelsa State even before the election.
He added that those complaining about the election in Bayelsa must know that it happens everywhere else, and Nigeria cannot be an exception.
His words, “Yes, the results of the election would have been foretold if anyone had paid attention to the internal dynamics of Bayelsa State even before the election. A lot of variables came into play at the same time. One is the non- performance of Governor Seriake Dickson. The second one is the atrocious disrespect the governor showed to the father of Bayelsa, the former President Goodluck Jonathan. The third is the love the people of the state showed to our candidate, David Lyon. These and other factors made it possible for us. Like my friend and brother, former governor Timipre Sylva said, ‘the governor made it very easy for us to win the election.”
“I knew the governor would blame everyone but himself after losing the election. One would have thought he would do a proper introspection rather than retrospection of his leadership in Bayelsa. If he did that he would come to an unsavoury result. He has not shown democratic capacity, he has not shown capacity to develop Bayelsa State, and he has not shown capacity to respect the elders and stakeholders in the state. I’m not surprised that he is blaming everyone but himself. If there was anyone who helped the party to win the election more than anything else, it was the governor himself.”
“When people make allegation it is for them to prove. He who asserts must prove. It is not for people to stay in the comfort of their room and begin to make wild allegations. But that is not to say that elections have ever been perfect in Nigeria. It has never been perfect in any jurisdiction of the world, Nigeria is not an exception. It is true we have to improve on our electoral processes but that is not to say that every Tom, Dick and Harry will give reasons for failure. Perhaps we have to learn to accept defeat and congratulate winners after elections, especially that of November 16. I think it would have been proper and more enabling for Governor Dickson to put a call through to the winner and governor-elect. Let me state for emphasis that the results of that election reflected the will of the people.”
“If you are a keen follower of politics in Nigeria, you should not be surprised that Edo State is in the folds of the progressives. For a very long time, other parts of the South-South had always belonged to the conservatives. This is the first time that the conservative part of the South-South had ceded power to the progressives. It is an open door for the progressives to make an entry into the South-South. It is an opportunity for the people to have a taste of the progressives and their capacity to bring good governance and compared to what they have always had under the conservatives of the ideological divide. If we (APC) properly manage Bayelsa, it will be a catalyst for the proper development of the South-South. If we manage our success very well it will be a good example for other parts of the South-South to follow.”
“The situation in Bayelsa is different from what we had in Rivers and Zamfara states. I don’t want to go deeply into legal issues. I leave that to our lawyers and the legal department of the party to protect our mandate. But let me say without disrespect to the judiciary that the intervention of the judiciary in political processes poses a great challenge to all of us and we must find a way of dealing with the challenges.”
“A political party is a human organisation with its contradictions and tendencies for conflicts. But the good thing about this is that politics has conflicts resolution mechanism as one of its tenets. As long as we meet we must have conflicts and must have the capacity for conflicts resolution. The situation in Rivers, though shameful, but the party is doing much it can to resolve the crisis.”
“It is true we have many flashpoints in Niger Delta. This is due to large factors. One is that we are perhaps the most heterogeneous zone in the country. We hardly find issues that are so monumental in context that will override our differences. Sometimes we find but most other times we don’t. That’s why we have many conflicts in our zone and one of which is the composition and the management of the NDDC. I take strong position on this because a matter of development is something that requires strong attention. The NNDC was established by an Act of Parliament and for us must be superintended over based on the Act. Anything that is taken away from the Act constitutes an infraction and disrespect for the rule of law. The Act says that all monies accruable to the commission must be managed by a governing board. The law does not envisage any interim or ad hoc committee. So it is clear that what the minister (Godswill Akpabio) is embarking on is an illegal misadventure.
It is so shameful that we find it very difficult to understand what the mindset of the minister is because some of us think he is doing this for personal benefits. He claims the interim management is to allow for a forensic audit as ordered by the President but we find this statement fallacious and self-serving. First of all, does the creation of the interim management committee help the work of the forensic auditors in any way? Secondly, are members of the committee auditors that would help the standard external auditors coming? Thirdly, was the minister not one of those who nominated people into the governing board? Are you aware that one of the interim management committee members was nominated on the governing board? What could the person do as a member of the IMC that could not have done as a member of the governing board? We have observed that anytime you take the NDDC under the supervision of the ministry headed by a Niger Delta, he uses the NDDC for personal politics.
We are calling on the president to step in. The president sent the lists to the Senate and they have been screened and confirmed. It will not be a good thing for the president to allow the minister to disrupt the good work of the NDDC and bring shame to the APC in the South-South and Nigeria in general. The minister must purge himself of the impunity he enjoyed in the PDP. In the APC we mean business because we are to deliver on the mandates of Mr President to our people. We can’t tolerate any form of impunity from the minister or anyone.”
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