Jonathan’s Difficult Options In Bayelsa Governorship Race

By Emmanuel Aziken

After much dithering procrastination President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday made his first public comments on the election holding in his home state of Bayelsa.

The former president had been conspicuously silent about the election and particularly about the mutterings in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

For the man who became a unifying symbol for the people of Bayelsa and the South-South geopolitical zone, the seeming apathy with which Jonathan approached the governorship election in his state reflected the chasm between him and the leadership of the party in the state.

What had been gist in many quarters around Bayelsa and the country was confirmed about two weeks to the election when Governor Seriake Dickson confirmed that he met Jonathan at least 15 times to discuss the succession but that they did not come to an agreement.

Though the PDP candidate Douyle Diri adopted by Dickson was a protegee of Jonathan’s, having served in the former president’s cabinet as governor between 2006 and 2007, he was not endorsed by Jonathan.

Jonathan like many leading political actors in the state apparently did not like the approach that Dickson took in foisting Diri and his running mate alone.

A leading civil and political rights activist, Mr. Joe Ambakaderimo who took Diri to the Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB over alleged failure to declare his assets, described the former president as an unhappy man.

“Jonathan like many other political actors are not happy because of the way Dickson has managed the process,” he told GreenWhiteGreen.

The development has inevitably led President Jonathan, Bayelsa’s most foremost political office holder in history to a difficult situation of adopting a governor foisted on the state by Dickson.

The situation for Jonathan was compounded by the fact that the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC had since the advent of the Muhammadu Buhari administration advanced into the state.

In 2019 the APC won two House of Representatives seats and one Senate seat all in the party’s stronghold in Timipire Sylva’s base in Nembe.

Though PDP activists say that the APC won the seats through violence disruption of the polls, it is, however, no comfort for President Jonathan that a state that was once wholly PDP is now under the threat of the APC railroading itself to the Creek House Government House that had been the exclusive preserve of the PDP.

Though fingers are pointing at Dickson for plying an exclusive political game that serves only his person, Jonathan is undoubtedly in a dilemma as to how to respond.

Is he to swallow his pride and support Diri or because of the actions of Dickson give his vote to the APC the party that drove him from power, demonized him and his family and diminished his legacy?

It is no surprise that Ambakadrimo responding on Saturday said that Jonathan is a very sad man.

However, as he met with election observers, on election eve, President Jonathan who has established a niche as an election observer in Africa said: “democracy is not just about having elections and announcing results, it is way beyond that.

“If you don’t follow due process, if you don’t abide by the tenets and guidelines of free, fair and transparent electoral processes, then you can’t claim to be practicing democracy.”

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