Timipre Sylva, governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bayelsa State, in this interview speaks about the reason he wants to return as governor of the oil producing state, why he wants to pursue the agenda of infrastructural development, among other issues. JOY ANIGBOGU brings the excerpts:

You have been cleared by a Court of Appeal to contest but there are still other issues not just during the electoral process but much later, this matter about your running mate, Mr. Maciver, one about his eligibility and the other one that he was mak­ing inciting comments, are you not bothered that even if you win, those issues regarding him will come up like the kind of situation we had in Bayelsa four years ago?

I don’t think so. I am not worried about that I want to face things before me. On the issue of the court, most of the things we said here are sub Judice, they are before the court. They are not things that I want to make so many comments on. On the issue of my deputy governorship candidate, I will say that yes, that amnesty was granted at that time. When there is an amnesty, you must know that there must have been a previous crime. We believe that the unconditional pardon that was given to the militants at that time would have taken care of the problems about the issues that were on ground before the pardon. On the issue of whether I was going to spend more than four years, a lot of us have been in the same situation who have spent the same. You know that five governors were involved at the same time. Four of us have gone ahead to serve their four years. In the case of Yobe State, it was a different case. He took over from his governor because he died. He went ahead and contested for a first term and then a second term. All these happened here. I don’t know why my case is becoming an issue. When the court annulled my elec­tion, it stated very clearly that the particular election did not hold. I don’t know why we are counting what the court had annulled. Whatever oath I took based on the first election, I believe that it doesn’t hold water. Even the Supreme Court in the case of the five governors said that as far as they were concerned, it was not necessary for me to take a second oath because it was superfluous. When the Supreme said it was su­perfluous it meant it didn’t really hold. It is for the court to decide, and I believe that the judiciary will rule in my favour.

You said that you are running again to be governor, because you have an unfinished business, what are these unfinished businesses?

On the first question, I don’t why the focus on this matter alone, there are other matters that were filed. There was also a matter filed by somebody that contested the election also challenging whether I could run for the second term. The Judge in that case ruled that I had every right to contest again. We need to go back to that case and not just this one. This one is unusually politicized that is why everybody is aware. There is another judg­ment side by side with this one. As to why am going back, this is a question a lot of people ask. I left a lot of things undone. If you are aware, at the time I was taken out of office I had a lot of things outstanding to do. The way I left was not the way I wanted to leave office. I wanted to bring things to a closure. The way I was taken out of office was quite horrif­ic. A lot of things are going wrong in Bayelsa State. Some of the things that I started that I thought should have continued that I thought should be good for the people. I had a robust pro­gramme. I was on course to stabi­lize power in Bayelsa State. The programme was stopped. The turbines that we purchased are nowhere to be found. I don’t know what happened to the turbines. Today the electricity situation is Bayelsa is very dire. If you look at the educational side as well, I did quite a bit. I completed the building of a library in Yenagoa, and that library has been aban­doned. It was 100 percent com­pleted and it is still not function­al. Some people just didn’t want any credit to go to me. I built 24 health centres across the state, equipped them. I go to some of these communities, I feel very sad because these facilities are not functional. It is just to deploy personnel to the health centres but they have decided to keep them fallow. So many of these things that I did have just been abandoned and I feel like the state will definitely benefit from them When I see the poverty situation in Bayelsa and I know that I can contribute quite a bit to that as well because of my ex­perience and exposure. I think that I should go back and within the next four years hopefully, I will be able to do some of these things that I hopefully want to do for my people.

It was alleged that the name of your deputy was smuggled into the presidential amnesty list, secondly you are a former Petroleum Minister in this country, do you think that your performance as Petroleum Minister will enhance your chances to become the governor of Bayelsa State?

The deputy governor’s name was not smuggled into that list. Anybody that said that is just being mischievous. In fact I conceptualized the amnesty programme. I understand how it came about. The amnesty pro­gramme initially was designed for Maciver, who is my deputy governorship candidate now. He was the first to call me then as governor to say he wanted to come out but was afraid that they would arrest him. So, I went to President Yar Adua then. I told him that some of the militants want to come out but were afraid. He actually gave me a verbal approval initially. I had to bring Joshua Maciver out and when he came out and everybody saw that nothing happened to him. With that enthusiasm everybody wanted to be part of the programme and I went to the President, and it was approved and the rest is history now. Anybody who is saying that Joshua Maciver didn’t accept amnesty is indeed mischievous. Even on the day of the amnesty when all of them surrendered their arms, there were video clips that he was actually the spokesperson. He spoke on behalf of all of them who accepted amnesty. I don’t know where this story came from that Joshua Maciv­er did not accept amnesty. He was actually the first to accept amnesty. He was very instru­mental to the success of the programme. As to comments that he made, these are com­ments made on campaign train. A lot of people made the same comment. There was somebody in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that said that anybody that defected to the APC should be burnt down. They make all kinds of statements, and we know that these are not state­ments that should be made but the rhetoric’s are determined by what comes from either side. This side speaks first and the other side replies. All we are looking for is a peaceful elec­tion. As APC we are looking for a peaceful election in Bayelsa State because we believe that in a peaceful contest we will win. On the issue of my tenure as a Minister, I was Minister of State. I address the things that were brought to my table which were done by a lot of techno­crats who assisted the office of the Minister of State. If NNPC for example tells me that this is what they have perfected and this is how it’s going to happen, of course I was bound to an­nounce it. I don’t know whether I have the capacity to say NNPC, you are wrong because they have the institutional memo­ry. I was coming and going. I was working with NNPC and that was what they told me. “This is the programme for the rehabilitation of the NNPC. We insisted that the refinery should be fixed. I told them that even if we were going to sell off the refineries, we were not going to sell them off as dead refineries. If you look at the programmes that I came with they were very laudable. If they have not succeeded now, you can be sure that they will soon succeed. For the CNG programme, everybody knows it is a programme that will be good for this country. If it has not succeeded within the time frame that I said it was go­ing to succeed, if there are time over run that is nit there, that doesn’t mean it won’t succeed. Those programmes are good for the country. The fixing of the re­fineries, was it a bad judgment? The CNG was not a bad policy? It’s just that there was time over run. Projects management sometimes are time over run. There were some programmes that succeeded while I was there. For me to have passed the PIA it was a major plus, you must agree with me. That had taken so long before my time. We pursued it and we were able to pass the PIA. If you look at what shaped my tenure you will agree with me that I have defi­nitely made some achievements.

What are the things you want to do for the people of Bayelsa State in the highlight of your campaign, the issue of the oil theft which is a major issue affecting that part of the country, so what are the specific priorities you want to address?

I was saying everywhere during my campaign train that I will have a long tenure of four years and so I will want to hit the ground running. With the experience that I have I know that there are things I would want to put on ground as foundation for a future government to grow. One of the biggest problems Bayelsa has is human capacity. I want to develop human capacity in Bayelsa State. We have not seen human beings as a resource. We always look at natural resources. Human beings is the biggest natural resources that we can have. If we don’t develop that resource it can become an albatross because I believe that is also the major problem of Nigeria. I want to go there and focus on educa­tion, empowering our people and giving our people skills. When I was governor the previ­ous time, I had an arrangement with a South Korean company to build a skill centre and when it built it, they will supply the equipment and give the people the skills that they require for oil industry to prepare them to really take positions in the oil industry. Unfortunately, when I left that programme was not continued. All the skills acquisi­tion centres that I was building were just abandoned. In the place where I built the skills centre, they put a polytech­nic there. Of course it is not working. I am sure that you have not heard of a polytech­nic. What we want to do is to be able to develop our human capital, give them the skills that they need. Train them for today and for tomorrow. I want to build infrastructure. Bayel­sa is backward when you talk about infrastructure. There are no roads in Bayelsa. As gover­nor I was the one that had to do an emergency road programme. I created most of the internal roads within Yenagoa because there were no roads at all when I got there. We want to deepen that programme. We want to connect our people to the rest of the country. We want build power infrastructure. We want to build water infrastructure. During my time people were fetching water. Water was connected to most places in Yenagoa. When the government that succeeded me took over, in the guise of expanding the road, they dug up all the pipes and there is no water. Even the water board today is buying water from “mai ruwa” (water sellers) in Bayelsa. So, we have to create water infrastructure. We have to create power infra­structure for our people. If you generating the power you must ensure it is distributed to our people. With my experience as former Minister of State for Petroleum, there is a need to develop an economy in Bayel­sa State. The easiest economy to develop in Bayelsa is a gas based economy because I am aware that Bayelsa is one of the gas reserves in Nigeria. In fact more than 50 percent of the gas for running energy comes from Bayelsa. We can build around that. About 22cubic feet of gas, and if it lands in Bayelsa can enable a lot of investments, in petro-chemicals, fertilizers. We believe that if we work with the private sector and with relevant agencies in Abuja we should be able to develop a gas based econ­omy that will employ our peo­ple. I want to develop agricul­ture. In the agriculture I want to focus on two items. We are going to focus on rice because Bayelsa has a lot of swamps. We have the longest coast line in Nigeria. 185 kilometers of coast line. Bayela is known to be a fishing ground in Nigeria. If we are going to go into rice programme, the federal govern­ment has already started that, the pan-agro rice programme. Pene mabri rice farm, that was established under the Niger Delta Basin Devlopment Authority, with the farm alone we are in a position to feed the whole of Nigeria from rice in Bayelsa and have enough for export because we have the natural conditions for the development and production of rice. If we look at rice produc­tion as a value chain, and you look at the production of rice in Pene mabri and then you look at the possibility also of milling the rice, and you get a bagging factory to produce the bags, you will have a value chain that will employ thousands of people. We have the fishing agricultural programme. I have tested this in my first tenure, I did a pilot on the rice programme and I also did a pilot on the fishing side. Now if I come back and with the success of the pilot, we will ensure that we become the biggest supplier of fish in Nigeria. I am sure that we will be in a position to export fish to the rest of the world. We have to stabilize power and I almost achieved that because I was removed by the Supreme Court on the 22nd of January 2012 and that same year in May I was to start a clamp down on uninterrupted power supply in Bayelsa. Unfortunately I left in January and so I didn’t stay in Bayelsa State to start the clamp down and I believe that we can stabilize power with the gas resources that we have. With the partnership that we can have with shell and all the producers of gas in Bayelsa we should be able to stabilize power in Bayelsa.