The build-up to the governorship election in Bayelsa State was loaded with wild predictions. People were just talking without basis. The thing became unnecessarily tied to the event of April 28 2015. People felt General Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) had completed the conquest of Nigeria and every other political contest after the April 2015 presidential election would yield to the pattern already established in that historic election. It was taken that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was on a retreat and the APC would continue the push until the former is completely obliterated as a platform for seeking political power.

Overnight, men and women with whom the PDP could hope to stage a meaningful defence against the APC’s onslaught jumped camp and became part of the pack of hounds. For instance, in just one day, the PDP lost to the APC, well over 1000 members including its state chairman, Col Sam Inokoba who later died before the election. Mr. Timi Alaibe, by far the biggest fish in the PDP pond in Bayelsa after former President Goodluck Jonathan also changed waters.

Things had looked extremely good for the APC in the state which also had the federal might behind it. Sundry commentators including newspaper columnists were encouraged by the emerging prospects to predict outright APC victory in the Bayelsa governorship election. In fact, my Big Bros, Sam Omatseye of Nation Newspaper got impatient and wished for time to be shortened so that the election could hold and Seriake Dickson would be sent out of Creek Haven the same way Goodluck Jonathan was sent out of Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.

Mr. Omatseye was on Channels Television discussion programme, Sunrise, last week to do a postmortem. He made just one valid point which was that, the election which returned Dickson should not stand since the number of cancelled voters was higher than the margin by which Dickson defeated Timipre Sylva. Like other sympathizers of the failed APC candidate, Omatseye did not say why, given the objective conditions, APC or Timipre Sylva should defeat the PDP or Seriake Dickson in the just concluded Bayelsa polls.

It is a missing link that I shall aspire to provide in today’s endeavour. But first, the poser has to be reframed to make it more affirmative. That is: ‘why Dickson won’ or ‘why Sylva lost.’ As a people, we love to live in self denial. Our reality is very different from the realities in America or Europe where we love to draw up references to explain domestic puzzles. We are still at the base degree in most things and the sentiments that drive us are primordial, almost primitive.

We often run ‘home’ or to our comfort zones at the slightest threat. And we usually flee in stages. If we are running away from Nigeria, we think of our zones. If we are running from our zones, we think of our states and if we are running from our states, we think of our ethnic group. When Goodluck ran from Nigeria, he came to the South-south geo-political zone and when it looked like the zone could not give enough security, he shifted farther from the mainstream to Bayelsa; Otuoke, precisely.

In Bayelsa, the position is that Mr. Timipre Sylva is part of the gang that chased Goodluck Jonathan into Bayelsa. Bringing Sylva to take over Bayelsa as governor is like chasing Jonathan beyond Bayelsa. That is like closing all windows of political ventilation against the former president. No true Ijaw man would allow that. But this is even looking at the whole process sentimentally.

The facts are even more compelling. To outsiders, Bayelsa is an all Ijaw State which was why its first civilian governor, the late Dipreye Solomon Peter (DSP) Alameyesiegha was aptly named, in addition, as the first governor-general of the Ijaw nation. But among the people, there are dialectical variations which are played up to advantage when situations call for such game. In that so-called all-Ijaw enclave, there are majority and minority stakeholders. In that sense, Sylva, who is from Brass and Nembe Bassambri in Bayelsa East Senatorial District is a minority stakeholder while Dickson from Sagbama in Bayelsa West is a majority stakeholder.

Language or dialect is the determinant here. The written or spoken Ijaw is not as widespread as it is presented to outsiders. In Bayelsa, only the central and west senatorial districts are defined by this central language. The entire east comprising Ogbia, Nembe and Brass council areas and even Yenagoa local government area which is part of the central are loaded with conflicting dialects. About 70 per cent of the two or so million population of the State is in the central and west. This is the demography that will always rear up when the stakes are high and there is need to drive down to the basics.

In 2007, Timipre Sylva had a smooth sail to Creek Haven because there was a seemingly unity of political purpose under the PDP. Even though Jonathan who got elevated to Alhaji Umuru Musa Yar’Adua’s deputy never trusted Sylva, there was little he could do to change the course of things. Sylva became governor in spite of Jonathan in 2007. The real man that turned the tide for Sylva was Dr. Edmund Daukoru, the Amayanambo of Nembe Kingdom who was then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s minister of petroleum.

At the next Bayelsa election in 2012, Jonathan who had transformed from playing a subordinate to a substantive role at the presidency had all the variables under his control. He did not hesitate to throw out Slyva and bring a more reliable ally, Seriake Dickson. Almost immediately, Sylva moved to the APC in search of political survival and to build capacity to battle Goodluck Jonathan. The just concluded Bayelsa election was a continuation of the Jonathan/Sylva battle.

It was also a battle to teach Sylva to be humble and magnanimous in strength. The man has been carrying on like the conqueror of the great British Empire since May 29, 2015 when Jonathan was sacked from Aso Rock Villa. He has appropriated a chunk of the credit for Jonathan’s sack. This has added to the feeling of invincibility in him. At the APC’s primary to choose the governorship candidate, he overwhelmed the processes and made himself inevitable in the calculations.

In that intra-party popularity contest, the ordinariness of Sylva was underscored as new comer Mr. Timi Alaibe appeared set to pick the party’s ticket. When the ticket was slipping away, Sylva brought in Abuja to pressure his main challenge to step down. The consequence of that power show was the outcome of the governorship election.

All things being equal, Alaibe is about the only politician with the entrenchment to upturn the scales in Bayelsa politics. Sylva knows this. And Dickson knows too. In fact, all the men and women of substance in the camps of Sylva and Dickson are people that migrated from Alaibe in his years of political hibernation. If the APC had had the courage to stop Sylva and match Alaibe against Dickson, perhaps the story for the party would have been a lot more palatable.

Sylva has this bulldozer spirit. He believes too much in his armour which pushes him to open multiple battle fronts at the same time. At the last electoral contest, he was in battle with the PDP and the APC at the same and then hoped most naively to reach beyond himself and triumph. He is fighting just too many battles at home. Even the man, King Daukoru, who recreated him after God had finished His work, is hardly on the same page with Sylva. What is his problem?

The point here is that Timipre Sylva, an upstart in the context of the game in Nigeria, does not want to be properly guided. In the circumstance, he can only be prone to fatal accidents one of which he encountered in the Bayelsa election.