Ravaging Sylva, levelling Waziri


Written by Lasisi Olagunju Friday, 25 November 2011

To sack does not just mean to relieve someone of an appointment. It more fundamentally means also to “ pillage or plunder, devastate or ravage.”  When the media was abuzz with the news of the removal of the immediate past chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Farida Waziri, the word “sack” featured prominently in the reports.

The news came at a time when Timipre Sylvia of Bayelsa State was grappling with another form of sack - he cannot fly the second term flag of the party on which platform he got the position he currently occupies.

The EFCC is not alien to the kind of removal experienced by Waziri. Before the amazon from Benue State, there was Nuhu Ribadu who suffered multiple career injuries, as he was dragged out of the EFCC. For Waziri, the tolling of the bell last Wednesday morning should not have come with a jolt. If you walk a tight rope you should expect anything from a fall to a feat. The circumstances of her appointment plus the fact that the man who put her there died midway, made her reed a hapless victim of the howling winds of politics. That she stayed that long and survived amidst attacks from men of the past and those of the present just hold her out as an amazon. Unfortunately, even in history, most amazons fought wars but were vanquished. The training they got to use all weapons in single combat combined with their personal honour, integrity, courage and gallantry, never availed them before rampaging men of power. They lost battles. This amazon just lost her own like Aello to Herakles.

Bayelsa State also is at home with the politics playing out between Sylva and his party with his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. Before Sylva, there was Dieprieye Alamieyeseigha whose surname means “big -man- does-no-wrong” and, in fact, became a victim of this strange impunity worldview. He believed so much in his own bigness  as Ijaw “Governor General”, and with messianic zeal, convinced himself that as the foremost warlord on the Ijaw political turf, he could not be wrong. The big man forgot then that bigness is a relative term, and so, when the ‘big man’ in Abuja moved against him, the devastation was total. Timipre Sylva is along the same road. For a man who was given the native Ijaw name, Timipre, which means “stay alive for me” or what the Yoruba would call Rotimi, the circumstances of his birth, which emphasised survival as a primal goal, appeared lost on him.

Sylva is the second beneficiary (after Jonathan) of the Alamieyeseigha sack. The media has quoted him demanding to know the sins he committed to qualify for the treatment he got from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Could it be that the man forgot that politics is another name for mystery? You do not have to commit any offence to be made a jetsam by the crew of the ship of politics. Your case becomes worse if you become too big as to attempt taking the ship from the captain. Sylva, in his moment of absolute control of Bayelsa affairs, founded and funded the dreaded Famutanghe which meaning underscores the fact that, indeed, the big man does no wrong. Famutanghe means “beat and throw away.”  Indeed, in this group’s name is some sort of poetic justice  for its founder. He is the one being beaten right now. If he will not be thrown away eventually, time alone can tell.

http://www.tribune.com.ng/index.php/news/31837-ravaging-sylva-levelling-waziri