The common concern among watchers of Niger Delta politics, particularly the recent wave of defections into the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) is: Can Governor Douye Diri withstand the tides and tornadoes?  Being about the last Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governor standing in the entire BRACED province, Diri has chosen to abide with his convictions that there should be morality in politics.

   As a grateful governor, Diri has never forgotten how fortuitous circumstances propelled him through the Senate to the Government House of Bayelsa in Yenagoa. It is popularly held that Ofrapepe, Senator Henry Seriake Dickson, purposely emplaced Lawrence Erhujakpor and Diri as senators on a temporary arrangement to pave the way for his eventual ascension to the Red Chamber .

   At a point in the lead-up to the 2019 general election, it was very doubtful that the strategic positioning by Dickson would fall into shape. That was explainable, because contrary to the general optimism that the PDP and its presidential standard bearer, Atiku Abubakar, would defeat then President Muhammadu Buhari and APC, the former military head of state led his change-party back to victory .  

   But on the threshold of leaving office and the Bayelsa State governorship poll scheduled for November, Dickson and his protégés hung their luck on fate. As things turned out, the power of incumbency could not withstand the federal might as the APC and its gubernatorial candidate, David Lyon, braced the tape of the governorship race in a magical win.

   However, somewhere along the line, reminiscent of the Dammam miracle when Nigeria’s Under-20 football team came from behind to defeat Russia, David Lyon’s return as winner of the governorship poll was overturned by the Supreme Court.

  The matter, which travelled through the courts as a pre-election matter, was the contention by PDP that Lyon’s running mate, Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, entered the race with a fictitious academic record. Three months after the election, precisely on February 13, 2020, a day to the inauguration of a new administration, the Supreme Court held that the confidential document submitted by Degi-Eremienyo to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was incompetent.

   Further, the court ordered that Diri of PDP should be given a Certificate of Return, which automatically made him the governor-elect. The following day, Diri mounted the same podium upon which Lyon had been rehearsing for the event to be sworn in as Governor of Bayelsa State.

   Sources had alleged that the infighting within Bayelsa APC led to a soft coup against Lyon. It was claimed that the former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and former governor of the state, Timipre Sylva, passed details of the manufactured documents by Degi-Eremienyo to the opposition PDP out of apprehension that allowing Lyon mount the saddle as governor would obstruct his chances of seeking the APC ticket in 2023 after serving out his tenure as Buhari’s minister.
Rehash Of Opposition Playbook

   Penultimate week, wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Dame Patience, volunteered her opinion about her husband’s perceived interest to re-contest the presidential poll on the platform of opposition PDP.

  Speaking in Abuja after receiving The Women Icon Leader of the Year’ Award, Mrs Jonathan laid to rest the plots and speculations that her husband would seek a second term in office as president. Insinuating that the former President did not forget anything at the Presidential Villa, she recalled how in 2011 President Tinubu supported former Jonathan to win the presidential election.

  She outlined her possible action in 2027, saying that she would join the First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, to vigorously campaign for Tinubu’s re-election, noting: “I stand by my friend; my friend is great. I told her I would campaign with her. I’m not denying her. I’m not running. I’m not going back to the villa. If you call me, I will not go.”

   Mrs Jonathan also assured the first daughter, Folashade Ojo, of her support, urging her not to lose sleep over her father’s re-election, since according to her, “Nigeria’s Presidency is turn by turn; if it is not your turn you wait.”

   Turning to the Iyalode, who attended the award ceremony, Mrs Jonathan stated: “All the way, we are with you; no shaking. We will follow. Direct us and we will follow, because there is only one president at a time. We don’t have two presidents.

   “I am outspoken. If I don’t like something, I will say it. But if I like something, I die with it. I believe in one president. I believe in turn by turn. When it’s your turn, I will support you. When it’s not your turn, step back so that the country can move forward.”

   Recall that former President Jonathan’s name started making the rounds, especially in PDP circles, when some northern political bookmakers began thinking about the best strategy to restrict President Tinubu to just one term and plot a pathway for the earliest return of the Presidency to the North. While former Kaduna State governor, Mallam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, who crossed over from the APC to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) contended that the Presidency should remain in the South for another four years, he declared that that opportunity should preclude President Tinubu.

  However, the embattled opposition PDP joined the conversation and started tinkering with the idea that conscripting President Jonathan to complete his second would give the party the leg room to solve the Atiku versus Wike scheming for the soul of the party.

  Introducing some theatrics into the plan to drag Jonathan back to PDP presidential politics, the Chairman of PDP Governors’ Forum and Governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, declared that he was prepared to shelve his ambition for the former president .

   The first bold effort to enlist Jonathan into the presidential race was in 2023, when some anonymous groups were said to have picked up the APC presidential nomination form for the former number one citizen.

  Then, as of recent, some northern chieftains of APC who felt that then President Muhammadu Buhari was confused as to how to prosecute his succession plan saw Jonathan as the shortest pathway for the return of political power after four years to the North.

   It was learned that the attempt to lure Jonathan back to presidential contest by majorly northern players has not abated. Mrs Jonathan’s bold and declarative assertion that the former first family was not interested in returning to power must have come as a warning to political jobbers and power mongers to leave them alone.

 The combined weight of Mrs Jonathan’s dismissal of any further participation of her husband in electoral contests, as well as the serious move by APC apparatchiks to get Bayelsa State into the ruling party is now on Governor Douye Diri.

   Diri, who does not cease to see his Valentine Day swearing into office as nothing short of a miracle, has vowed to stay put in the major opposition party, PDP. It was perhaps on account of his stubborn loyalty to PDP that some supporters of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar toyed with the idea of pairing him up with Diri for a possible joint 2027 presidential ticket.

  Those who tip Diri for a possible presidential opening say that with former Delta State governor, Arthur Ifeanyi Okowa, straying to the broom camp, the Bayelsa State chief executive possesses all the relevant qualities to make a good presidential running mate with capacity to crystallise South-South votes.

   But recognising that PDP had rewarded Bayelsa with a taste of the Presidency, and knowing that Dickson showed him favour by supporting his gubernatorial position, Diri has continued to rebuff pressures and overtures to defect like his other colleagues in the Niger Delta.

Against the background of unremitting pressures on him to defect and Diri’s perceived obdurate support for the embattled PDP, the NEW Associates decided to roughen up the terrain and pave inroad for APC.  

   The NEW Associates, it should be noted, comprise a conglomeration of supporters of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, who has carved a role for himself as a political consultant for the APC on Niger Delta politics.

  NEW is an acronym for Nyesom Ezenwo Wike. So, the attempt to host a reception for the FCT Minister in Yenagoa brought the group into direct confrontation with Diri.

   Without waiting for interpretation from any quarters, the Diri understood the planned reception for Wike as a political scheme intended to rubbish his hold on the Bayelsa electorate and their support for PDP.

  Addressing the media on the matter, the governor stopped short of calling the planned civic reception as an act of provocation. He warned that “the Bayelsa State government would not condone any act that could disrupt the state’s peace.”

   Diri enjoined the security agencies, youths, elders, and traditional rulers to be alert to the development, even as he expressed dismay that the reception should be held in Yenagoa or Bayelsa for that matter, instead of Rivers State, where the honouree hails from.

   Coming not long after a state of emergency was slammed on Rivers State, many residents believed that the attempt to ruffle the peace in Bayelsa was an indirect pay back to Diri for mouthing opposition to the suspension of Governor Siminalayi Fubara.

   But with the Jonathans’ avowal to throw their weight behind President Tinubu’s second term to reciprocate his support for them in 2011, some watchers of the Bayelsa politics claim that Wike and the NEW Associates are working for Lokpobiri’s gubernatorial run instead of President Tinubu.

  Although not blessed with a high voting population, whether Bayelsa falls for APC’s tsunami across the South-South or remains the only foothold of PDP will not amount to anything more than a symbolic standing.