ALAIBE REPORT, ANOTHER OBSESSION WITH SYLVA’S GHOST

ALAIBE REPORT, ANOTHER

OBSESSION WITH SYLVA’S GHOST

Our attention has been drawn to a committee report administered by Mr. Ndutimi Alaibe in which phoney allegations of grand financial crimes were made against the government of Chief Timipre Sylva.

Sylva dismisses these allegations as unfounded, and a failed attempt to divert attention from the calamitous political parodies committed in Bayelsa State by these accusers.   

The report of the kangaroo committee is as ridiculous as it is unsurprising to any Nigerian. The composition did not belie its intent as another mock team impulsively set up to deliver a pre-determined judgement. In their continued battle with the ghost of Sylva, those who have installed a puppet administration in Bayelsa State have once again demonstrated their loss of touch with the essence of government and their choice of shadowboxing as state policy.

To be sure, government is an administrative structure set up to govern human beings with needs. Any normal investigation of government expenditure would try to demonstrate how the financial laws were flouted. The Alaibe committee did not attempt to do this. It simply compiled the incomes that accrued to Bayelsa State within a carefully selected period targeted to smear Sylva, and assumed that there were no needs met in the period.

The Alaibe report did not demonstrate any flouting of the state’s financial laws and regulations. If anyone had proof of such contravention, they knew where to go. And where to go is not an illegal committee unknown to the laws of Bayelsa State and Nigeria.

Besides, the allegations thrown up by the power usurpers in Bayelsa State are too weighty to be handled by people with vested political interests in the state and whose track record and history smell of corruption. The report by the Alaibe committee is at best biased, petty, and heavily tainted. This is yet another manifestation of the constant distress in the camp of those who recently usurped power in Bayelsa State as they live in perpetual fear of Sylva, and guilt of the harsh judgement of democratic humanity.      

As we near a judicial resolution of the manifest political travesty in Bayelsa State, those who believe they should do nothing other than fight the ghost of Sylva should learn to mitigate their desperation, at least, for the decency of what remains of our democracy that they have tried so hard to compromise.

DOIFIE OLA

Media Aide to Chief Timipre Sylva