At 27, he was the youngest member of the old Rivers State House of Assembly. At 43, he emerged as the third civilian Governor of Bayelsa State. At 55, he was appointed Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.
This is the engaging story of an exemplary achiever, dating back to Tuesday 7 July 1964, when Timipre Marlin Sylva was born.
He grew up with an abiding dream of becoming a world class writer. He made up his mind to be one when he read the works of Wole Soyinka. Everything about Soyinka fascinated him — the activism, the versatility, the sheer literary prowess. This ambition to become a writer soon manifested when Sylva published his first short story in the pages of Sunday Tide in Port Harcourt.
That first story gave birth to a few others, and he resolved to read English as a course of study at the university. In 1982, when he secured a place in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Port Harcourt, and met Prof. Kay Williamson (of blessed memory), Sylva decided to specialise in Linguistics, and he proved to be one of her best students. Even so, his love for creative literature took a significant leap when he became the pioneer Assistant Editor of the English departmental journal, Ofirima.
His early poems are still to be found in the maiden edition of that journal. Till date, Sylva writes poetry in his quiet moments, and one of his most pleasurable pastimes is reading his poems to his beloved wife, Alanyingi and their children, in the private comfort of their home. One of his most favourite poems summarises the year — from January to December — weaving from month to month in delectable lines that speak of promise and love.
Sylva’s choice of career interest took a different turn, however, when he met Yemi Ogunbiyi. The famous journalist, critic and personal friend of Soyinka had visited the University of Port Harcourt, and given a short talk. Sylva, then a second year student, listened keenly as Ogunbiyi made a frank and honest declaration about his paltry earnings as a writer.
Don’t expect to be rich in terms of cash, if you want to be a writer. That was the message. Sylva took that pronouncement at a personal level. At that point in his life, he stood in need of a career that would bring in cash on a regular basis. He knew what it meant to be poor, and he wanted to know the other side of poverty as well. He wanted his portion of wealth.
Sylva recalls: ‘The first thing that gave me food for thought was when Yemi Ogunbiyi, the MD of Daily Times, came to give a speech while I was at the university. He spoke about his writing career and how it was really tough, how in one year he got N11 in royalties from one of his books. I started to ask myself if this was really the right career for me. I wondered if I could make a living from it. That really got me thinking’.
Before he went to bed that night, Sylva decided that he would have to do something better with his time. If writing couldn’t bring him good cash, then there was no point being a professional writer. He would write in his spare time, whenever the bug bit him. Something else was bound to bring in cash in grand quantity, and he would go in search of that engagement.
The years 1983 and 1984 were particularly crucial for Sylva’s development as a politician. Student union politics at the University of Port Harcourt was growing into maturity, and a wave of political consciousness engendered by the radical lecturers of the day was already washing over the student body. Marxist rhetoric was in the air, and the ideals of Walter Rodney were being spelt out from the pages of his famous book about how Europe underdeveloped Africa.
Sylva did not present himself for service in the student union government, but he learnt enough that would be of service to him in the years to come. For one thing, he was a primary witness to the political intrigues surrounding the eventual emergence of a loud and popular student politician of that time, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, who was one class behind Sylva.
Sylva remembers what he was told about his own early beginnings. Born at Okpoama in Brass Local Government Area (LGA), in today’s Bayelsa East senatorial district, Sylva was glad to tell how his narrative began. As he put it: ‘I was not born in the hospital because, at that time, there was no hospital in my community. I was born at home. I will call myself a true home boy, born at home and bred at home’.
He grew up to know everything a young, adventurous boy needed to know about growing up in Okpoama. He took his bath at the waterside and swam along with his playmates. He knew what it meant to go fishing because he used to drop hooks at the waterfront, an earthworm dangling at the end of his line. He climbed coconut and mango trees for the sport of it.
But he was soon to proceed to Lagos where his father worked at the Central Bank of Nigeria. Enrolled at Ajeromi Central Primary School, Ajeromi Ifelodun LGA of Lagos State, Sylva enjoyed his first spell of city life from 1970, at the end of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. Six years later, the precocious boy was despatched back home to his birth place for his secondary school education. He won a place at Government Secondary School, Twon-Brass, and showed himself to be a good student from 1976 to 1981.
The intervening year saw him cultivating his interest in writing, until he secured admission into the University of Port Harcourt, where he majored in English Studies with a stress on Linguistics. As fate would have it, Sylva had a one-year stint with Shell Petroleum Development Company in Warri, Delta State, in the course of his mandatory national youth service.
At the end of the programme in 1987, he set up his own oil company, Joint Oil Services with offices at Elakahia, Port Harcourt, and began to express his understanding of the oil and gas industry in concrete terms. He also opened a small printing press as a mark of his commitment to propagating literature.
Within that time bracket, Sylva also worked for the National Minority Business Council, Port Harcourt, as Executive Secretary. He served his term with distinction to the admiration of his people. In 1991, in apparent recognition of his dedication to duty and his evident passion for public service, he was warmly and unanimously elected to represent his constituency in the Rivers State House of Assembly, on the platform of the now defunct National Republican Convention. At 27, he was the youngest member of the House.
The experience, however, was short-lived. The military, under the charge of General Sani Abacha, struck too soon and political parties were summarily disbanded. Sylva went into business briefly, virtually to explore what he had learnt at the council. But he was quick to return to politics when the ban was lifted.
As one of the founding members of the United Nigeria Congress Party, Sylva soon emerged as the party’s state financial secretary. Again, it was not meant to last. The five political parties of the day were shoved aside by military fiat. In 1999, at the critical turn of the century and with the full-fledged return of civil democracy, Sylva joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and was subsequently appointed as Political Adviser to the first civilian Governor of Bayelsa State, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.
He resigned his appointment in 2002 to become the Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Edmund Daukoru. At about that time, Sylva was appointed a member of the Governing Council of the Federal University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State, holding his place until 2004. Two years later, he resigned his place as Special Assistant to the Minister, and went into politics decisively. Without batting an eyelid, he ran for the office of Governor with confident propulsion.
In the keenly contested gubernatorial primary of 2007, Sylva came second only to Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Before long, however, Jonathan was called up to become the running mate to Alhaji Umar Yar’Adua, presidential aspirant of the PDP. The vacancy inside at the state level for the PDP was later filled by Sylva, who won the governorship election, beating his closest rival, Prince Ebitimi Amgbare of the Action Congress of Nigeria. On 29 May 2007, Sylva was sworn in as Governor of Bayelsa State.
However, Sylva’s opponent, Amgbare, was still aggrieved over the outcome of the elections. He took legal action to challenge the former’s victory. The Bayelsa State election petitions tribunal upheld Sylva’s election, but Amgbare took the matter further.
The Appeal Court in Port Harcourt duly overturned the decision of the tribunal, and nullified Sylva’s election on 15 April 2008. The five justices of the Appeal Court, in fact, were unanimous in their verdict and ordered that Rt. Hon. Werinipre Seibarugu, Speaker of the state House of Assembly, be sworn in as acting Governor to replace Sylva, with a new election to be held within three months.
On 24 May 2008, that election saw Sylva running as the authentic PDP candidate, and winning with an overwhelming landslide vote that left Amgbare panting for breath. Accordingly, Sylva was sworn into office as Governor of Bayelsa State on 27 May 2008. It would appear that the anxious one-month stay away from his duty post gave Sylva sufficient room to cogitate on the kind of government he would run if he got back his mandate. When his prayers were answered, he heaved a huge sigh of relief, and pledged to form a broadly inclusive unity government.
On the eve of his birthday that year, he made a poignant speech that spelt out the plight of his state. As he put it, ‘I wanted to be Governor because I felt that it was time for me to contribute to the change and development of Bayelsa State. I believe that our generation has a mission to fulfill in this country. We have abundant resources, so much so that Bayelsa State has no business being poor. Bayelsa is at the base of the map of Nigeria. It is carrying the rest of Nigeria on its shoulders, literally’.
Sylva’s understanding of politics is as straight-forward as it is instructive. ‘Politics is about endorsements. You go to the key players, seek endorsement from the appropriate quarters, and things begin to run on auto. That’s what happened to me. I was widely accepted, and that’s how my bandwagon was formed’, he says.
His political bandwagon began to run full steam when he left the PDP, and pitched camp with the All Progressives Congress (APC). How did it happen? On Friday, 27 January 2012, Sylva was relieved of his appointment as Governor, following a Supreme Court ruling which effectively terminated his tenure alongside his counterparts in Kogi, Adamawa, Cross River and Sokoto States.
The historic ouster brought to a close many months of political intrigues arising from litigations over the validity of the Governor’s tenure in office, as well as speculations as to whether or not he would triumph over the party machinery that had brought him to power.
Sylva had been locked in a battle of wits with the PDP since the party dropped him from the gubernatorial elections scheduled for 11 February 2012. He was hounded by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which had been waiting in the wings to arrest him over sundry allegations of financial mismanagement in the course of his five-year stay in office. He was replaced by Rt Hon. Nestor Binabo, Speaker of the state House of Assembly, who was promptly sworn in as acting Governor.
Sylva has had his share of tribulations and persecutions in the past. For many months after he left office, his public image was associated with the excesses of Famu-Tangbei, the fearsome security apparatus for which his government was known. Sylva’s most enduring contribution towards the peace process in the Niger Delta may well have begun with the ceasefire accord he brokered with the raging militants of the day.
On 22 August 2008, he summoned all agitating warriors to leave their various camps and gather at Peace Park, Yenagoa, for what turned out to be a far-reaching reconciliation summit. A dizzying quantum of arms and ammunitions fit to start a war were surrendered that day in preference for a more beneficial process that led eventually to the much commended amnesty programme of the Umar Yar’Adua presidency.
A few years later, when Sylva bounced back to reckoning, he was flying a new identity as the founding father of the APC in Bayelsa State. Before long, the party began to flex visible muscles, and its followership grew in large numbers with a gale of swift defections that came as an obvious threat to the ruling PDP. This threat was fully demonstrated in the December 2015 gubernatorial elections that saw Seriake Dickson win a second term.
For many analysts, that election could have been won by the new party, if only Sylva had been satisfied with playing the role of a godfather, and given full-scale endorsement to Timi Alaibe as flag-bearer of the APC. It so happened that Sylva still had his eyes on the gubernatorial seat.
He is quoted as saying that the state still owed him four years in Creek Haven. His determination to occupy that office was renewed in the months leading up to the campaigns for the 2019 primaries. It was clear that he would still run for Governor on the APC platform a second time, unless something untoward happened.
On 31 August 2019, Sylva was appointed Minister of State for Petroleum Resources by President Muhammadu Buhari. That appointment changed the game for real. Seventeen years before that time, he served as Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources. Now he would be holding the plum job in a substantive capacity.
Sylva looked at a line up of possible choices for his replacement in the race to Creek Haven. In the end, he settled for David Lyon, a popular pipeline surveillance contractor with a record of open-handedness. After a long-running campaign, and a favourable wind of defection that saw some of Dickson’s staunch supporters fleeing the last days of the Restoration Government, the APC coasted home to victory in the landmark election of 16 November 2019.
APC’s Lyon polled a total of 352, 552 votes to defeat Senator Douye Diri, candidate of the PDP who polled 143, 172 votes. It was a truly historic outcome that brought relief to many sons and daughters of Bayelsa State, who rejected the prospect of enduring a continuation of the Dickson legacy as embodied by Diri.
In his capacity as an administrator, Sylva was busy long before the elections came to pass. In 2018, he was appointed as Chairman of the Oil and Gas Free Trade Zone, and subsequently as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Nigerian Maritime University, Okerenkoko, Delta State.
Students of the university were understandably excited when Sylva was appointed a Minister. They were equally full of goodwill for their foremost navigator. For them, it came as a definite proof that the No. 1 sailor of the Nigerian Maritime University commanded great popularity with his people at the grassroot level. He was a man they came to recognise as the people’s admiral.
For many, the recent news outbreak about a coup plot purportedly sponsored by Sylva to overthrow the government of President Bola Tinubu came as a most unlikely eventuality. According to Pope Pen, author of the only book on the former governor, the allegation was an overarching attempt to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it.
‘I happen to have known Sylva at close range long before he became a politician’, said the pen pontiff. ‘We are not on the best of terms because of a few things I said about him in my book. But I am familiar with his temperament, his mindset, and his great dreams for society. I know for a fact that Timipre Sylva is inhabited by a competitive and adventurous spirit. He showed it in class, and he showed it in his everyday interactions with people.
‘He fell in love with politics when he came to understand it as a game of chess. He had this energetic response to politics that could not be mistaken. When General Muhammadu Buhari staged his coup on the last day of 1983, Sylva was a second year student at the University of Port Harcourt, just like me, and he was very upset with Buhari for disrupting the democratic process typified by President Shehu Shagari.
‘Sylva was simply impatient with the military, and he couldn’t wait for them to go back to the barracks quickly so that he could play on the open turf of politics. He had an uncanny way of studying partisan alliances, and getting to know which party would win.
‘Long before he became a politician, he saw politics as a healthy cockfight, and knew where to place his bet. I tend to think that he would be the last Nigerian to sponsor a coup. I know him to be a patriot. He detested military dictatorship as a way of governance from his younger days. He believes in democracy and civil rule. Left to him, he would do everything within his clout to make democracy survive in Nigeria. Sylva remains a fanatic of the APC, and I don’t see him working against the interest of his party.
‘As for the EFCC invitation, I cannot vouch for him. I can only say that I shed a few teardrops when I read the remarks of Senator Henry Seriake Dickson about Sylva. It is the kind of heartfelt response I would have given as well. Dickson practically plucked the words from my mind, and they resonate with me at a personal level. I truly look forward to shaking hands with the distinguished Senator. He has earned my respect’.
