Douye Diri is the Governor of Bayelsa state. Indeed, a Miracle Governor. His ascension to the office of governor was as sudden as it was miraculous. You don’t get shooed into office just hours before another person was to be so honoured. Only the Finger of God is capable of such wonder. Diri, himself, knows this. So, at the slightest opportunity, he never fails to acknowledge the miracle that he has become in Nigeria’s political firmament.

The latest of such opportunities was the 5^th Freedom Online Lecture which held in Lagos last Tuesday. Diri was a Special Keynoter. Theme was, 2023 – 2027: Nigerians, Elected Leaders and Expectations. His keynote went beyond the remit of setting agenda for all strata of government from 2023 to 2027. He digressed as he prefaced his treatise. It was his digression that brought the realities of the state of Bayelsa to the audience. It was a cry for freedom on Freedom Online day. The governor most eloquently captured the pain and strain that bog his people, a state aptly tagged the Glory of all Lands. Truly, Bayelsa is the glory of Nigeria, an equivalent of the Biblical land of Canaan, the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey.

Bayelsa is a small patch of earth. It’s Nigeria’ source, the nation’s hope, the layer of the golden egg, the baker of national cake, but unlike the modern state of Israel (The Promised Land), Bayelsa does not fully partake in the eating of the national cake that is baked in its foundry and by its people. A cake baked with sweat, sometimes blood, at very high cost to the people of the state. You cannot be the state that produced the first commercial oil well (crude oil sold in the international market and the money spent on Nigeria) and not be the source of that nation. A source of joy, of strength and of national pride. Bayelsa brought both cash and crown to Nigeria. Cash made daily from the sale of crude and crown in terms of respect for Nigeria among the comity of nations. Nigeria became an OPEC member-nation in 1971, 11 years after the oil cartel was formed in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1960. Such international recognition was made possible by Bayelsa leading other states as the fruitful bough of the nation. You would think that with such historical significance as the ‘source’, Bayelsa would enjoy special status from the behemoth Nigeria federation. Never!

I know Bayelsa. It was my home for roughly one year when I served my country in the National Youth Service Corps scheme from 1991 to 1992. It was then part of Rivers State. Mater Dei High School, Imiringi, was my place of primary duty. It was once a model science school and it has produced great men and women. President Goodluck Jonathan is an alumnus of this great school. I taught there with a huge sense of pride and devotion. Not only me, there was a medical doctor corps member who strut his stuff (and he was really good) at the community clinic. There was also the current spokesman of the Army, Brig-General Onyema Clement  Nwachukwu, more popular with the natives as ‘White Clement’ because of another Clement of ebony hue in our midst called ‘Black Clement.’ For us, Imiringi was home. The rustic community reminded me of my own community in Delta state. Imiringi offered us more than home, it offered us hospitality and the opportunity to experience, first hand, the real meaning of environmental degradation. Imiringi lacked nothing. We enjoyed electricity powered by gas turbines. We had pipe-borne water from the community borehole. But the goodness in those two utilities was largely overshadowed by their toxic symbolisms to the community environment. Imiringi had one of the fiercest and hellishly blazing gas flaring points. A huge nuzzle pipe flares gas round the clock in the community emitting, without relent, toxic carcinogenic gas into the atmosphere. The pipe-borne water in the community is not the water that you know, the one you call pure (potable) water. This one is brownish, flowing from the deep soil of a land scorched by effluent from oil spills and sundry environment-damaging activities of oil majors.

Yes. I know Bayelsa. I know Emeyal 1 and Emeyal 2. I know Kolo creeks, Yenagoa. Been to Nembe by boat. We toured Bayelsa in our curious exuberance. We saw roads, good roads that led only to oil rigs, meaning the roads were constructed not for the people but to further the parasitic business of oil majors.

This, and more, was the basis of Diri’s cry for freedom for Bayelsa. He said: “For us, it is no coincidence that the first commercial oil well was discovered at Otuabagi, Bayelsa State, in 1956. It is, however, stating the obvious that many years after this discovery, oil became the mainstay of our economy, albeit at tremendous cost and sacrifice to our land, livelihood, and people.

“But, altogether, Nigeria has not been fair to the Niger Delta in general and Bayelsa State, especially. We continue to make heavy sacrifices to keep the economy of the nation buoyant, but our capacity is not inexhaustible.

 “Let me take a moment to make a few quick illustrations. The agricultural ecosystem of Bayelsa State has been damaged. Gas flaring continues to be a significant threat to our fundamental right to life because it hinders our right to a clean environment.

 “Our Atala Oil Field (OML 46), to which we hold deep emotional attachment and pride, has been the subject of an egregious heist in connivance with some high-level indigenes of the state. Companies operating within our territorial space avoid paying the requisite taxes by exploiting loopholes in the tax regime, thus heavily impacting our internally generated revenue, negatively.”

This is the kernel of Diri’s allocution at the Freedom Online lecture. It was his digression from the theme of the lecture but it resonated with the audience. It’s the heart of my advocacy for the Niger Delta states, especially Bayelsa, the forerunner state to other oil-bearing states. They deserve Special Status, far beyond the 13 percent derivation. The money deployed by the Nigerian government over the years to build up Lagos and Abuja came from Bayelsa and other south-south states.

Yet, the same Bayelsa cannot boast of Federal institutions in its domain. It took a Bayelsa son, President Jonathan to establish a Federal University in Otuoke in 2011, a good 55 years after commercial production of crude oil commenced in the state. A state with the longest coastline not only in Nigeria but in West Africa ought to be home to Federal maritime and Naval institutions, but never. Bayelsa has near zero Federal presence. How many indigenes of the ‘Source State’ are members of the elite club of oil billionaires in Nigeria? The incongruities are many and they form part of the marginalisation blues.

Truth be told, Bayelsa needs a special status, a form of symbolism, to show goodwill to a people from whose land Nigeria’s economic breath has been sustained for about 67 years and still counting. Diri did not say this, but sometimes, what is left unsaid is actually what is said. Bayelsa deserves more Federal presence. Simplicita!