Dickson: We Are Changing Bayelsa

Governor Henry Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State will be one year in office on 14 February 2013. In this interview with General Editor, ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE, OKAFOR OFIEBOR and Photo Editor, IDOWU OGUNLEYE, the Governor speaks on his achievements, his plans for the state and he seizes the opportunity to take a dig at his critics 

In your inaugural address last year, you spoke of a restoration agenda. This presupposes that things had gone bad. How bad were things when you came in?

Based on our expectations, we realised a lot of things were not going on as they should, making an alternative imperative. One thing led to another and I became the symbol of the state’s much-sought and deserved change. Just cast your mind back to stories that used to make the headlines in those days for you to understand how bad things were. Stories of insecurity in the state. Yenagoa, the state capital, became like Iraq or Afghanistan. The people did not see much development or improvement in their living condition. I will also want you to cast your mind back to those days before Bayelsa came into being. It was indeed the least developed part of the old Rivers State before God used the late General Sani Abacha to give us a totally homogeneous Ijaw State that is completely riverine. The whole of the state is below the sea level and has more rivers than Rivers State and more Deltaic than Delta State. It is actually a combination of the two, and yet more.

It is the centre of the Niger Delta, where all the contradictions of our nation in terms of lack of development of the Niger Delta region is most evident. The state is the worst affected, going by available indices of human development like illiteracy and inadequate infrastructure among others. It is against this backdrop that we had the three administrations preceding mine – Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, six-and-a-half years; Governor Goodluck Jonathan, now President, one and a half years, and the five years spent by my immediate predecessor,  Timipre Silva.

It became very clear that the aspirations of our state could not be met under the previous government, which made some of us have issues with the governor, though not personal. The state then became polarised between those of us who wanted change and others who, for some reasons, wanted the status quo to remain. But nothing personal and up till today, ex-governor Silva remains a citizen of my state. By divine providence, I became the symbol of that change because I believe power comes from God. So, I came in at a time when I had to reflect on the enormous possibilities of our state and the Ijaw nation generally.

I thought of the Ijaw nation because this state is the epicentre of the Ijaw people. Thus, to a large extent, the Niger Delta crisis is more of an Ijaw problem over lack of development. It is the Ijaw people who occupy the most disadvantaged part of our component. If you solve the Ijaw problem of underdevelopment in the human and physical sense, using Bayelsa State as litmus test, then the people will have a hope and the problem of the Niger Delta, to a large extent, would have been solved, too. And, therefore, a substantial part of our national issues would also have been dealt with.

That was why we kept talking about the concept of restoration to political leadership as well as remaining focused on the fundamental goals and aspirations of our people. But before then, it was apparent that those goals would not be met, be it education, security, infrastructure, values and collective prosperity, which have to do with connecting with our past and linking up with the future. So, that is what we have tried to do in the past eleven months plus.

How far have you gone on the restorative mission in the last one year? 

It has been both smooth and rough. Though very challenging, I love what I am doing. We met a situation that was far worse than what we imagined it was before we came in. I have lived a life of service to my people, whether at the community or political levels. So, what I am doing now is not strange. Basically, I am still within the familiar terrain of service. I thank God and our people, I have been able to pursue an agenda of reviving and transforming our society which, to me, is honourable. I remain eternally grateful to God and the good people of the state for making it possible and that has propelled me to keep working.

I already have an idea of what the state should be, which was why I determinedly swam in the troubled political waters for the sake of our people at those trying moments when no one would dare venture. So, it gives me an enormous sense of responsibility and we are doing our work with dedication and to see how we can translate those ideas into reality.

From the outset, you promised a paradigm shift in governance culture, values and lifestyle. Have you achieved that shift? 

We have built roads, schools and other infrastructure, but there are far more fundamental issues of values to be addressed, not just in our state but in the country. These are issues of ideals, beliefs and people having the courage to stand up for those beliefs. Many people have come to know that I am not a typical Nigerian politician, not even a good one. Anyone who interacts with me on issues would not be in quandary on where I stand. I am clear on my values and expectations of people, which make the issue of values very important because it changes the human mind. Philosophers have said that it is vain building a city without first building the human mind. So, I know what I am saying when I talk about a paradigm shift and that is what we have been trying to do in the state since I became governor.

This shift includes preventing waste, corruption, making politics a platform for service as well as service being sacred.

Service to some of us is a religion. If you serve human beings well, I believe you will be serving God well. So, all these are components of an ideology of service that make values and orientation imperative. One of the first things I did, having been inaugurated as governor, was to send a bill to the state House of Assembly, establishing a legal basis for transparency, accountability and openness, which is the basis for a democratic government. Even as a member of the House of Representatives, I spent my first five years there promoting transparency. I was one of the key sponsors of Freedom of Information Bill, FoI, and several other legislations that I sponsored, co-sponsored or supported. The records are there, and that is an essential part of me and what drives me in public service. So we have done a bit of that, but I can tell you it has not been easy trying to change the people’s mindset and their beliefs. We believe we have been able to give directions and expect that people would do things differently while we keep talking about it as well as the results they see. We hopefully know that the paradigm shift would be accomplished with time, prudence and hard work.

Given the huge importance you have placed on education in the state, would you say you are satisfied with the progress in that sector? 

Because our educational programme is very ambitious and the target I set for myself is so high, and considering the unforseen flooding we had to grapple with last year, I cannot say I am satisfied. We are not exactly where we should be, but I know we are on the way. I made a statement during my inauguration that I would not play politics with the development of the state, so for me education is not politics. Rather, it is a question of doing what has to be done. As I said earlier, it is vain to build a city without first building the human mind and that is the most important resource of human beings the world over. Therefore, developing the human mind and building the capacity of human beings is the most important challenge of our time.

For instance, there would not have been the Boko Haram insurrection if we had made the right investments in education and probably, there would not have been kidnapping, at least not at the rate it is presently. The human being is just a superior animal and it is training and mental development that differentiates him from other animals. So, that was why I declared a state of emergency in the educational sector, even though what I called “progress” is still foundational and not what the state ought to be in education.

For example, we have built 400 primary schools around the communities, villages and hamlets and 400 teachers’ quarters. We have started firmly on the right track, but we still have a long way to go. It is the right of every Bayelsan child, every Nigerian child to have functional educational facilities in every village where he or she resides. Until we get there, it will be difficult to say that we have achieved. It is the right of every Bayelsan child leaving primary to secondary school to have acquired basic computer literacy. Our educational policy is so robust that I want to phase out non-boarding secondary schools in the state, because part of what I have seen as the problem is the absence of boarding facilities. We realised that we are not incubating these young minds enough, not giving them an opportunity to have role models, not challenging them enough and remodelling their minds enough.

From the the next academic session, we are hopefully going to make boarding education compulsory at the secondary school level. If we are not able to build enough boarding schools for Junior to Senior Secondary school students, we will make it compulsory for the senior secondary students. We will do that at the expense of the state. Can we afford it? I believe so. With effective management of our resources from the state and the federal levels and by blocking leakages, we should be able to achieve it.

To me that is the number one priority. So every other thing has to wait. By doing that, we would be equipping them with the skills they need to live by in an increasingly competitive global environment. It is our duty to protect them against the challenges of the future. If we failed in that, then we would be sowing the wind and we should be prepared to reap the whirlwind. If you want to take education seriously, then the issue of teachers training and capacity building are not political. This to me are the fundamental cornerstones of our prosperity and stability not just as a state, but also as a nation.

We have so many ambitious plans on education, including the training of teachers. It takes more than building beautiful schools to have good education, because at the end of building beautiful schools, the teachers remain the most critical component because that is the catalysts for the transfer of knowledge.

Aside the capacity building we have begun, we have the Teachers Training Institute, which we have set up and expanding, and I want a situation where  primary school teachers in the state would go through it though they have been trained, retrained and tested.

Every teacher in the state would pass through the institute, because if we are going to entrust the future of our children to teachers, then we must know who and what their competences are. As part of our human capacity building, we have also built the sports academy for those of them who are gifted in sports to go there.

Just recently, I awarded the contract for the construction of 25 constituency secondary schools with boarding facilities for boys and girls. This is an addition to every local government headquarters having a model functional boarding secondary school. We are preparing the foundation for the future, a contrast to the immediate past when these facilities were absent and primary school pupils had to learn under trees and poor environment. We supply books, teaching aids, pay fees for students’ public examinations and provide remedial programmes through the Bayelsa College of Arts and Science, BYCAS, which had been scrapped by my predecessor. The Interim Joint Matriculation Examination, IJMB, gives students who could not make five credits another chance to qualify for university admission. I want to leave a legacy of education by the grace of God.

Your administration promised to hit the Atlantic on three flanks, so we would want you to talk on your achievements in road construction in the last one year. 

Anyone could go round Yenagoa to verify the various ongoing road construction works. I promised from the outset that I would deliver on road construction and we are doing that. People have even asked me how I hope to deliver on other things based on the ongoing roads projects, but I just laughed. I saw that as a compliment, which is better than they saying we are not doing anything.

It is only a blind man that would not see these projects in the state capital and other places we are working on. On the Atlantic project, we are committed to it because we believe the wealth of this state is in the sea, contrary to the general belief that our wealth is mainly in oil and gas. Indeed, we are rich in oil. As a matter of fact, oil exploration in Nigeria started in Oloibiri in this state, though it is now a metaphor for neglect. Our aspiration is to open up the state to enable us access our most valuable resources, which is maritime. This is a littoral state and it is maritime. As a matter of fact, the roads are due to have been constructed long ago by the Federal Government. There should have been access roads to Nembe and Brass long before, but they were only on the drawing board for many years. Also on the drawing board is the construction of an access road from Yenagoa to Oporoma to the Atlantic. There was also the plan to construct a road from Oporoma to Ogbia, but none of these roads exists, though you will see the details of their construction since the sixties in the Federal Ministry of Works archives.

What is clear is that the insfrastructural development of this state has been neglected by the country. We have the least kilometres of federal roads. Considering these times in the country, it is not realistic to expect that the Federal Government would come and spend about N120billion to build one of them. These roads are very expensive and there is no way you can turn around the economy of this state without these roads being put in place. For instance, we took up the road to NLNG in Brass because we believe we need to have a road there. We would not wait till eternity for the federal government to construct that road because of its importance. How long are we going to wait to have a road linking Oporoma to Agge? Besides, Agge is a natural deep seaport. Basically, we think that the government should either collaborate with the private sector or we gradually begin to construct the roads ourselves, based on the resources available to us. We are putting so much effort in that direction.

Though we believe construction of these roads should have begun at least in the last five years, unfortunately nothing happened and we are back to square one. Our government is doing so much to get them done apart from the roads being constructed in Yenagoa. So we are on course to get to the Atlantic from these directions.

What are your projections, particularly for the teaching of indigenous language and culture in the schools. While the initiative is laudable, can it be sustained? 

There is no doubt about its sustainability. One thing about me is that I say things I believe in and I am convinced that that is the right way to go. Already we have created the Ministry of Ijaw National Affairs and Culture in order to entrench our culture, language and history. There are several ongoing projects on that as well as coordinators to man them and I am very passionate about that, because language, culture and history are integral parts of human personality. It is also essentially based on who we were before we got to this state. That, to me, is the difference between one personality and another. We need to promote our culture and language, which have come under a lot of attacks and strong influences.

And this is why I think we need to make conscious efforts to preserve our primordial heritage and hand them over to succeeding generations. I believe we are not making our children as complete as they should be. I realise there is a drop in their residual knowledge from grandparents to grandchildren. If we do not remedy that now, there will come a time when children would not be able to tell which village their parents come from. There is no doubt about its sustainability because we are working on the institutions that will carry on the project and that is why the boarding schools, which will serve as the platforms, are very important.

I have already directed that the dialects of Ijaw language be taught in our primary schools. Why I am passionate about the boarding schools and the special ones where leadership training would be taught is that I want a situation where we can invite achievers and deserving Nigerians who would serve as role models to the students. They would talk to the children on how to live straight, work hard, dream big dreams and even pray hard. And to also teach them on how to see life from a perspective of service, duty and honour, and not the pervasive trend whereby people want to become millionaires overnight–which has actually destroyed the moral fabric of our society.

The state has witnessed a lot of security challenges, especially kidnapping. How have you been handling these challenges? 

The security situation in the state was very bad when we came on board. As a matter of fact, five people were gunned down the night before my formal declaration as a governorship candidate. Those who did it must have thought I and my supporters would be deterred by that hideous act. That was the climate of insecurity and the prevailing mindset at the time. That was the situation we inherited. From my background, I am a man of the law and have lived a life of obedience and service to the law, including its enforcement. I started my life as a policeman and later a lawyer, an attorney-general of the state, lawmaker and, now, governor. I knew that the dignity and authority of the law have to be protected because without that, every other thing would come to nullity. That was the superstructure I thought should be laid first.

We have taken other measures and demonstrated leadership and by personal example-from the enactment of anti-cultism bill to the law setting up the Bayelsa Security Trust Fund, Electronic Surveillance Law, among others. The people are not fools, because you cannot condemn cultism and yet be seen to be protecting cultists at the same time. Every cultist in Bayelsa has run away without being chased; same for the ban on commercial motorcyclists, because our pronouncements are backed by law.

They complied because none of them would want to be on the wrong side of the law. That superstructure of law, obedience and upholding the dignity and authority are important in governance. We have consciously made very profound investments in time and resources. For example, I shouldn’t be buying gunboats for the policing of the waterways, but had to do so because of the challenges we face there. We have procured 15 armoured gunboats to be deployed against criminals terrorising our waterways. With the observation, security posts built, training of our security outfits–Operation Doo-Akpor– the upland area of Yenegoa is safe.

The security outfits respond to distress calls within two to three minutes of such alerts, just like the London or American police. They are well trained and have imbibed the culture of service and efficiency in the discharge of their duty. So, with time, the security challenges we face would become a thing of the past. We need to do that because people perpetrate various crimes and criminality on our waterways, but when we flushed them out they tend to relocate to the creeks. They perpetrate crimes like bunkering, illegal refining of crude products in the creeks, trading of small arms, but we are optimistic that the federal security agencies would take care of that as they already are doing.

Bayelsa State has shown great agricultural potentials, what are you doing to tap and develop them? 

Agriculture remains a veritable area we can use in diversifying the base of our economy, as we are currently doing. We also believe it would create jobs and develop skills and we are very serious about taking full advantage of our agricultural endowments. Bayelsa is blessed with very fertile land. Besides, we do very well in aqua-culture and fishing because of our littoral status. We have vast agricultural endowments, which we, as government, are trying to maximise. The snag is that our farmers do not have the requisite skills beyond subsistence farming. We have opened discussions on doing all of these, and even in some cases, concluded agreements on a number of agricultural endeavours.

We have signed a contract with a ferterliser producing company and also working on industrial cassava farming. We hope to have the biggest cassava farm in the country. Already, we are through with the 40 hectares seed multiplication farm. We are collaborating with some Israelis, who would come here to do fish farming. We are also discussing with people with expertise to help in developing our vast rice production as well as expanding the Bayelsa palms. Before the advent of crude oil, this area was called the Oil Rivers Protectorate and it was palm oil and not crude oil. You must have learnt that Malaysians came to this part of Nigeria to learn how to plant palm seedlings many years ago. So, we have vast agricultural potential and we have set up various outfits to drive our collaboration and partnerships. We have the Bayelsa Agriculture Development Company Limited, where we warehouse our agro-investments. There are smaller companies under it, too. In no distant time, we are going to have very big farms.

I am passionate about these farms, just as we are passionate about security because we need to create an opportunity to engage and employ people. As a matter of fact, agriculture is so important in our overall plan to turn around our economy. We are not only producing for our local consumption alone, but to feed the rest of the country and possibly export. We are trying to build preservation facilities for export of these goods and that is why we are so keen about not just producing but being in control of the delivery chains and quality control mechanisms. Soon we are going to have big time poultry farms that would provide employment for the people. So, I believe agriculture is one avenue for creating wealth, training people and engaging them with skills and we are very conscious of this.

Many criticisms (such as honouring the late General Sani Abacha, which you explained earlier and the accusation that your government meddles in the financial and political affairs of Kolokuma-Opokuma, Sagbama and Ekeremo local government areas have been hauled at your government…

I am a man of deep convictions. I am somebody, who cannot be easily intimidated or blackmailed and I remain true to my views and values. I will remain open to constructive views and criticisms. I am actually my own worst critic. I cherish criticism and my legal training propelled that.

As an advocate in law, I am trained in the art of advancing an argument, using moral suasion, but without bitterness and personal animosity. I am open to new ideas and I consider myself a student and not a master of anything. I can only be persuaded by reason and not sentiments or blackmail or threat. So, that is why I am unfazed about them once I am convinced within me. I expect the criticisms to be well founded in reason and logic, not sentiments or blackmail. People should be free to criticise me constructively, but the criticism about  the local councils was pure blackmail.

What is playing out in those three councils is the desperate antics of people who want to have control of local governments areas for whatever it is worth. We know those behind the blackmail, they are people who are still stuck in the past. Their ambitions are threatened and their belief of having access to free money as well. But they tend to forget that the state has gone beyond that and now, we need people who can contribute in our local councils, people who can be agents of peace and stability and not agents of violence and brigandage.

So the political culture of this place is very crude and sometimes their tactics are very primitive. Otherwise, people ought not make the type of statements they are making because they are not founded on facts. I am one governor who does not tamper with local government allocations. I stand to be challenged. But I have also insisted they announce whatever accrues to their councils, just as I do at the state level, in accordance with the transparency law we have enacted.

There are certain parameters I expect the local government chairmen to conform to and I expect them also to work with their councillors and implement the budgets as passed by them, just as we do at the state level. Local government chairmen cannot act like sole administrators and since I do not deduct their allocations, there is no reason that any local government chairman or their sponsors should divert monies meant for the running of the councils. That cannot happen under my watch in spite of the blackmail. Political godfathers to local government chairmen and any other citizen in the state will not be allowed to be threats to peace and security of the state or their local government areas.

The free education policy of your administration is welfarist. Was there anything in your background that informed that? After your secondary school, you did not go to the university straight but joined the police…

I did not have things very easy while growing up. I would have wanted to go straight to the university after my secondary education, there was no good school around me, I didn’t apply. I am happy about my challenges because it toughened me and in a way, helped to shape who I am.

Investing in and liberalising education is the right thing to do. If there was this kind of policy in my childhood, it would have made things a lot easier for me and I would not have had to join the police as a constable before working to see if I could save some money to go back to school. But I am happy my life turned out the way it is. God helped me to have the experience I had during my stint in the police. As a teenager, I was roaming the lonely streets of Port Harcourt, in search of what to do to raise money to go to school. It propelled me to do what I am doing now.

Free education should be the right of every human being. It is unfortunate that our constitution made some of those aspects non-justiceable. What I am doing is to act out the non-justiceable aspects of those social and economic rights.

What about the health sector?

Very soon we will unfold our massive and ambitious health insurance policy. I don’t like categorisation because the human mind is too vast and potentials are immense to be pigeon-holed. If democratic governments are truly for the people, then we must truly live for the people by serving, empowering and equipping them with knowledge.

What do you think is the bane of leadership in this state and the country? 

As I said earlier, this state has a crude and primitive political culture, which cannot be divorced completely from the circumstances of our development. This is actually one of the most backward states in this country.

To move this state or the country forward, we need to get the leadership selection process right, but the process is usually perverted in under-developed societies and which quite frankly even accounts for the underdevelopment. So, it is like the chicken and the egg–which one comes first?