Lyon’s roar, Kogi’s harvest – TheNigerialawyer

By Sam Omatsheye

It is not often that a columnist waits for the news on deadline.
For the outcomes of the Kogi and Bayelsa governorship polls, I had
to comment on the strength of knowledge. So, my fingers dithered on
the keyboard until I knew.

The polls invoked paradoxes, and nothing excites a writer more
than this. And we saw this at the weekend. For instance, everyone
expected warfare in both Kogi and Bayelsa, but we expected Kogi’s
harvest to be a child’s play compared to Bayelsa’s lords of the
flies, apologies to Nobel laureate William Golding. The creeks
squeaked compared to the growls and bloodlust of Kogi land
grabs.

Kogi collapsed into fear and trembling. Ballot snatching, voter
intimidation, gunshots, et al. It was a Hobbesian terrain. Those
with the superior will to power must triumph. He who was bound to
violence was bound to win.

But Bayelsa’s feast of paradoxes roils the mind. First, we heard
the state governor’s outburst of outcry. Normally, during
elections, governors soar, while the opposition is sore. Optimism
and self-pride tranquilise their situation rooms. There is often
tension, but it is a tension of hope rather than despair. Their
minds are like the words of Poet Samuel Coleridge that
“anticipation is more potent than surprise.”

But when a governor does not only sulk, but makes an open play
of his frustration, you know the game is up. When Governor Seriake
Dickson started calling for polls cancellations in Southern Ijaw,
Nembe and other local governments, it was obvious he knew that his
candidate’s face would not break into the smile of yesterday, that
yesterday being when he triumphed, if controversially, in his
party’s primary. That is a historic irony.

But it is a paradox because of the story of Oil Minister Timipre
Sylva and former President Goodluck Jonathan. Who would have
thought that Jonathan’s people and Sylva will be smiling together
over an election result in Bayelsa. We know what harm Jonathan did
to Sylva, and how the lanky fellow was kangarooed out of power as
governor and, as president, he mounted a campaign against him with
an EFCC hound. The irony, too, would be a horde of PDP stalwarts
grumbling that their former leader has defected at home to sup with
the enemy. But that is the drama that Dickson has wrought in his
home state. The man Dickson called his elder brother when Sylva was
the enemy has now become a sibling disaster.

The other historic irony is that David Lyon’s victory in Bayelsa
signals the first big fall of the PDP stronghold in the Niger
Delta. Not Dickson, not all the oil money could hold the state for
the PDP. Dickson’s party was a prisoner of hope that fell in his
own stronghold. The only man for the past decade who challenged PDP
in the state has been Sylva. It looked like a hope against hope.
But his fight has been a testament to tenacity, a man who glimpsed
light where darkness fell and leapt into it. It was a tale of epic
self-confidence sometimes put down as reckless.

Now, he will laugh while his opponents would say, like Walt
Whitman in his poem The Compost, “Something startles where I
thought I was safest.” Sylva has been a small man wrestling a giant
for a decade. The big man brought Sylva down several times but his
back did not graze the wrestling floor. The small man wearied the
giant and, seeing the sweat, sagging muscles and despair of the
hulk, Sylva took advantage and threw the giant in one fell swoop.
That happened on Saturday.

Also ironic was that about four years ago, it was Sylva who was
holding press conferences and making the case that he won the
election but that Dickson and his men had corralled violence to
undo his electoral fortunes. Dickson rallied the Ijaw nation as a
mantra as though Sylva were a foreigner. The same Ijaw nation
looked away from him and anointed Sylva’s anointed. It is a saga of
political revenge on the back of the people.

In the election four years ago, Southern Ijaw Local Government
Area was holding a huge chunk of the voters and the parties had to
go through a rerun for two reasons: Its decisive tranche of voter
count, and its dubious pride of place as a whirlwind of death,
ballot snatching, gunshots, fights, brawls, et al. This time
around, Southern Ijaw was a relatively tranquil story for
Bayelsa.

It is also a story of David Lyon known for philanthropy and
large hand, as against a governor’s reputation as a tight fist. His
choice as APC candidate was a no-brainer in that respect. He was
described in this column as the Li(y)on of his tribe because that
is the root of David. He is known for his charisma and intense
power of connection.

His campaigns were moments of bonding with the crowd. He is also
an oil magnate in his own rights, a man of wealth and the common
touch.

In Kogi, the main irony is not always an irony in Nigerian
politics. He did not pay salaries. He did not connect with the
people. He did not unmake a bad past of governance by remaking the
state for good. Rather, he became a governor known for lack of
vision. But he won not only by emphasis but landslide. This column
recorded his lack of popularity. But the man boasted a huge war
chest but he can now beat that chest. Is it electoral justice? His
opponents said he marshalled the material and materiel of state. He
won not fairly but fiercely. Einstein said: “Not everything that
counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted
counts.” Was that what happened? But the analysts of Kogi politics
say his PDP opponent was no better. Was this a Hobson’s choice
giving the Kogi people two bad choices and they followed the road
once taken?

There is also the false humility of Kaduna State Governor, Malam
Nasir El Rufai begging the Kogi people to forgive Yahaya Bello for
his iniquities. He said he was on his knees. But in democracy, we
don’t genuflect to elect. We don’t stoop to conquer. We earn our
victories.

Both victories in Kogi and Bayelsa are victories of Buhari’s
APC, and more potently a great moment for the party chairman, Adams
Oshiomhole, who accumulates accolades for his party while his party
foes sulk and cry. It is no consolation for some members of the APC
brass, including those in Buhari’s cabinet who worked for the
opposition and wished APC lost because of envy of the rise of the
profiles of some of their colleagues in their regions.

The last paradox is that in the two victories, APC was at once a
challenger and defender. In Bayelsa, it challenged and torpedoed
the incumbent party. No one would have thought it would be a
landslide. It is one of the most consequential victories in
Nigerian elections. In Kogi, they held the Alamo, if many question
its strategy and tactics. It is Bello’s Kogi’s harvest.

-The Nation