D.S.P Alamiyeseigha: A simple man caught in a complex dilemma

By  Lindsay  Barrett

If you stand in the centre of the Swali Market in Yenagoa on the busiest of its well paved internal streets, which is known as the Alamieyeseigha Line, you might gain a little insight into the reason why D.S.P Alamieyeseigha (or “Alams” as most of the ordinary people in the state fondly called him) came to be regarded as something of a folk hero.

When he came to power in 1999 and took office in 2000 the Yenagoa main market was a confusing jumble of local vendors spilling into the middle of the public thoroughfare in the small hamlet of Ovom near where the sports stadium stands today. In the first few months of his tenure DSP commenced the building of a modern market complex on the then outskirts of the town.

Today it is no longer on the outskirts but is instead a central facility that serves as testimony to his visionary awareness of the ordinary people’s needs. By the same token the major and most successful housing complexes yet built in the state, at the so-called Black Market site, and the Ekeki/Azikoro Road lay-out and Opolo Commissioner’s quarters (now an estate occupied by the middle and higher income purchasers of the units) serve as testimony to his desire to encourage and attract the people of the state to settle at home.

It is not that these efforts were without problems, but the priorities that DSP chose to focus on early in his tenure as Governor showed that he had simple and realistic goals. He wanted to provide the basic services and amenities that would make life at least tolerable for the average citizen as his first objective. Because of this he often fell on the wrong side of those who felt that he should be initiating prestige projects that would enable him distribute political largesse as a major objective. He did not always resist this temptation and unfortunately some of the most distressing consequences of his earliest forays into governance emanated from this practice. He was however an open and brutally frank individual. Whenever he felt cheated by the inability of some of his political cronies to fulfil the commitments that he entrusted them with he could be highly vocal in his protestations.

DSP was a surprisingly unsophisticated political operator who always seemed ready to say exactly what he meant in any discourse. He never chose diplomacy where frank talk could suffice and this may have earned him more enemies than friends, but he was always smiling. He had a simple and straightforward approach to human relationships that often disarmed those who interacted with him and he once explained to me that he felt life was too short to maintain grudges against those who might wrong him. According to this philosophical attitude as proclaimed by him those who do you wrong do themselves more harm than good especially if you forgive them. It is a sad fact that this viewpoint of his was eventually to be put to the test in no mean order by the ordeal that overwhelmed his governorship experience.

Regardless of how many interpretations or twists in the facts are applied to the narrative the inescapable truth is that DSP was targeted by political adversaries when he was shopped as a transporter of cash without regulatory revelation to the UK authorities. Those who claim to be approaching the story from a viewpoint of objective truth say that he deserved to be caught, but they never ask why he was selected to be shopped when he could hardly have been the only guilty party at the time.

In addition to this it later became clear that DSP had been engaged in political contestation that made his removal from the scene desirable for the machinations of several powerful groups and individuals in the Nigerian political arena and the unseemly glee with which they pounced on his misfortunes tended to suggest that they might even have been responsible for initiating his troubles. Surprisingly some of these same people later surfaced as allies of their erstwhile victim in political groupings that were meant to build a consensus of opinion in which his stalwart championing of the cause of Ijaw solidarity was of particular relevance. It was in such gatherings that his vital importance as a bridge builder and a valuable mobiliser of support especially at home came into play. No matter how complex the political scene in which he participated became DSP’s relevance was always directly linked to his support and credibility at home, which his ordeal at the centre did little to change and might even have strengthened.

The fact that his military career shaped his approach to human relationships is an integral and instructive element in reaching any understanding of the Alamieyeseigha phenomenon as a political symbol. He was determined to remain at the centre of affairs of the state that he had served with exemplary attachment to the grassroots ethos in spite of several lapses of principle on the part of some of his close allies. This assumption of indispensability reflected his past as a member of the elitist traditions of the military institution but it also symbolised his concentrated attachment to the consolidation of the communal experience that the establishment of Bayelsa State represented for the Ijaw peoples.

In many respects the fact that he became the first elected Governor of the state placed an almost unbearable burden on his shoulders. He was expected to be much more cautious in his approach to intercourse with the almighty Federal Government than his nature predicated, and when his problems arose it soon became clear that he was being targeted for destruction rather than enjoying the privilege and protection that his status should have provided.

Nothing could have defeated the populist sentiments of DSP Alamieyeseigha more than the spectre of the formerly loyalist members of the state assembly being coerced into creating an impeachment case against him. When this was finally crafted and his disgrace was effectively consummated he appeared to be resigned to his fate but happy that he had escaped the original charges in the UK. However this was bound to be a shadow hanging over him because of the circumstances in which he absconded from the British justice system and when it was announced recently that the UK was about to seek his extradition it appears that he was thrown into deep distress.

Chief Alamieyeseigha for all his bluster and show of bravado was a very sensitive and humane person and it was always obvious that he felt that his ordeal was the product of betrayal and treachery on the part of those he had tried to serve rather than any attempt to discipline him for financial misconduct. He always maintained that the cases brought against him were replete with circumstantial rather than empirical evidence of misappropriation of funds. Both in the UK and here in Nigeria in fact he was charged with unexplained expenditure and transference of substantial amounts but strangely enough the cases brought against him were largely silent on whether these funds were siphoned off from traceable public accounts.

DSP Alamieyeseigha may very well be remembered in the wider context of Nigerian history as a disgraced public figure but he will always be regarded closer to home among the people of Bayelsa State in particular and the Ijaws and other ethnic groups in the Niger Delta as something of a martyr. His personal generosity to several individuals and his concern for the welfare and empowerment of young people in the neglected communities of the Niger Delta are on record. He succeeded in installing several infrastructural initiatives against the greatest of odds, such as when he decided to deploy state funds to dualise and expand the main road into the state capital even though it was a Federal Highway.

He was proud of the fact that he was able to complete a major highway to his hometown of Amassoma at a time when even his own party’s top advisers were still claiming that such roads were uneconomical and almost impossible to construct. He also considered the founding of the Niger Delta University, located in his hometown of Amassoma as one of his most valuable achievements.

In the final analysis Chief Alamieyeseigha may very well have fallen victim to his own simplistic response to a highly complex situation in a country where all the leaders are in a constant contest to share the revenue from a single resource, oil. The fact that this resource is the most substantial contribution of his new state to the central coffers might have been regarded by him as justification for his confrontation with the powerful forces that eventually defeated him. But one thing that is certain is that he never regarded himself as working for the simple rewards of personal aggrandisement.

In everything he did he sought to build a structure that would enhance the collective empowerment of his people. His downfall might have come about simply because he regarded himself as a symbol of the neglect and disenfranchisement of his people and sought to show off the improvement in their status by exhibiting his own success at acquiring property. This might be an unforgiveable presumption but those who know the depth of “Alams” commitment to his people will find it easy to forgive him, and this might even include many of those who betrayed him in his struggle with the political forces that undermined his career.