A different type of Sylva

Julius Bokoru, Abuja

It is 28 August 2019, a Wednesday, and the rains still rage on, it is, after all, the heart of the West African rainy season. Bleak balls of clouds, gray and oppressive, hangs just above the 11-storey Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation building, NNPC Towers, as anyone within Nigeria calls it.

Timipre Sylva sits at his office, on the 11th floor of one of the four towers, looking past the huge marble desk, past flags of parastatals and the sky-blue of OPEC, past a bare, transparent film of glass serving as wall and into a frenzied capital, Abuja, retiring for the day. It is 4:30 and the sunset, then the rains, has come with the exasperating inevitability of long line of cars, buses hurrying low-mid level civil servants to the outskirts or, again, as we may be permitted to call, satellite towns.

Seated at that huge office, Sylva imagines the task ahead of him. The building, the job, is familiar. About 16 years ago he served as Special Assistant to the then Minister of State for Energy, Dr Edmund Daukoru who, at present, is the King (Amayanabo) of Nembe Kingdom. He knows the job, file for file, he knows these routes and the imposing structure block by block, he knows the screech of every elevator, the monotonous hum of the Air Conditioning system and the paralysing bureaucracy that could sometimes extinguish one’s fire.

It is easy to do the job by specification and by expectations: sign files, meet with oil moguls, maintain the relationship at OPEC, calibrate, more calibration and then just, basically, keep fuel available at petrol stations.

But staring over this glass wall, this showering, gloomy Wednesday late afternoon, Sylva is imagining a different route. The rebel in him is warming up and his eyes, behind silver medicated glasses, are beginning to narrow to a ghastly collage of pure mischief.

He smiles to himself. For he had found a route, those same routes with low photo-ops, less political capital, and series of landmines: getting the Petroleum Industry Bill passed and opening the country’s vast gas potential.

But the smile has disappeared now. His face, oval, and chocolate are settled to some ambition-laden grimace.

The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), an omnibus law meant to regulate the entire sphere of the industry and repeal all current existing oil and gas legislation, had struggled to see the light of day despite its introduction to the National Assembly over 16 years ago.

While the gas sector had suffered neglect for years for a country with over 209.16tcf of majorly unutilized gas reserves, putting Nigeria among the first 20 globally in gas ownership, in 12th position, directly under Indonesia at 11th and the United Arab Emirates at 10th.

Sylva understands, like anyone with basic knowledge of the oil and gas sector, that financially gas is cheaper to PMS, biologically it is cleaner and logistically easier to manage. Yet, 1percenters fear gas may push PMS off the scale of preference and lead, inevitably, to the end of fuel subsidy payments which, of course, constricts cash-flow to personal accounts.

Both tasks do not allow sleeping dogs lie.

He needs a plan, a strategy, and the nearly brutal force he must now need to push these through. Already, mentally, he is attempting a list of technical aides, who becomes who in his own small industry kitchen cabinet and then there is the worry if aides, however good or professional they may be, could see his vision and help him achieve it.

He reclines a bit more on his chair and recollects his own journey here. He imagines deeply, and very far too to the very beginning.

Okpoama sits by the Atlantic Ocean, it is the other half of Brass Island, the other being Twon-Brass. Sylva grew up with the constant sound of the seawaves crashing on the beach. More than a million times he, along with other kids, bare, have taken a dash from one end of the golden sands and exploded into a jump to the sea, defying her size and turbulence.

He has eaten enough fish, drank fresh, cold coconut water and has miles of sea travel. At nights, at a small but airy home illuminated by candlelight, while pretending to be reading, listening to the cold wailing of the deep-dark sea, he had imagined what the world was like, beyond these waters, after the sea and way, way out of this Island.

Port Harcourt came. Feverish and frenzied. A marketplace for opportunities. He attends the university of Port Harcourt, works for a while, and dares the unthinkable: he stands against veterans in a state assembly seat and wins, almost half a decade away from 30.

Dr Edmund Daukoru becomes Minister of state for Energy (This Ministry will be renamed to Ministry of Petroleum Resources years after) in 2003, and he gets appointed as Special Assistant. The rebel moves in again and his eyes settle on the governorship seat in Bayelsa State.

A long shot. But here is a man that loves stormy seas and long shots. Against mathematics, against odds and against basic expectations he wins and becomes governor at a record age.

But the inner rebel attracts trouble as magnet to metal. Sometimes, perhaps, it is easier to think it is the shadow of success, some sort of price you pay to the universe for the little favours it gives, sometimes.

And then through a tiny road of thorns and broken bottles, he gets here, this big, furnished office as Minister of State for Petroleum, deputising for the president himself, and yet, here, too, the rebel has come. Gnawing at him, poking, teasing, urging, and tempting.

In the months to come, to the satisfaction of that restless rebel, Sylva would rework a once unfeasible PIB, push it to the National Assembly and to its almost inevitable passage. He would survive bullets for this, for the PIB, with all its controversies and merits, stands for the masses against the oil 1percenters. The PIB is a frontal attack on the big money figures. It is a radical, total erasure of the settings of the country’s energy set up.

Same as the ongoing switch to gas, designed to lessen dependence on PMS, designed to fore-run an imminent removal of Subsidies on PMS, another ghoulish scheme that empties the country’s monies into deep, cynical private pockets, and designed to ready Nigeria for a post-oil future.

The last time he stood for the people against big power he got burnt. And now, with all his added wisdom, he is in no illusion he will be immune to lurking dangers. There is never an Eldorado, he thinks, never a time of absolute still. Even big bullies, the ones his ever-busy, incorrigible rebel is tempting him to dare, must go through some stress, if not pain, to inflict harm for pain is a two-way traffic, it must be shared between the sender and the receiver somehow.

‘I will fight for Nigeria’ he had casually told a journalist earlier in the day. And it was at that point it became clear the rebel had won, yet again. This would be a rough ride.

Outside. It begins to rain even harder. Sylva adjusts his red tie and ask us, non-technical aides, to give him a minute.

Everyone begins to hurry out, but as we leave, his eyes are back at the glass wall and he seems to look past the rains, past the gloom and the ashy storm, down, down, into the roads where only a chain of yellow lights suggests there is traffic.

The door shuts

Julius Bokoru is the author of the book ‘The Angel That Was Always There.’ He has essays, features and poems published on magazines across the globe. Presently, he is the Special Assistant on media and public affairs to the Minister of State for Petroleum, Nigeria.