Some cabinet members of the Bayelsa State Government are believed to have teamed up with the opposition against the re-election of Governor Seriake Dickson next year.
Some of the officials (names withheld), attended a recent meeting convened in Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, by a leading governorship aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Timi Alaibe, the former Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), who is expected to formally announce his ambition next month.
A source familiar with the development said Alaibe is reaching out to Dickson’s loyalists who are feeling shortchanged and sidelined in the system.
He met recently in Port-Harcourt with some of those pro-change elements, among whom were former lawmakers, former commissioners, special advisers and local council chairmen.
Many of them who met under the aegis of Bayelsa Peoples Consultative Assembly (BPCA) are from Dickson’s Bayelsa West Senatorial District. But they denied Alaibe’s sponsorship of the meeting.
Senator John Brambayefa from Dickson’s Sagbama Local Government area is Chairman of the group.
Members of the group took turns to criticise the administration of Dickson and resolved to align with the APC to wrest power from him.
But some elders loyal to Dickson yesterday said all the gang up against the governor would fail.
The elders who spoke under the aegis of the Bayelsa Development Forum (BDF) in a statement entitled: “Bayelsa’s squalid nuisance”, issued in Yenagoa and signed by its chairman, Tari Wellington and Secretary-General, Ekpai Okurus, accused BPCA of blackmailing the governor.
He said members of BPCA decided to join opposition against Dickson because he failed to satisfy their selfish demands.
Their words: “A combination of the harsh economic realities as well as the recent loss of the Presidency by the PDP has opened up new opp
ortunities for political adventurism by these persons, who believe that President Muhammadu Buhari will unleash the federal might against the former president’s home state of Bayelsa.
“Such is their puny mentality and the narrowness of their thinking. They had long constituted obstacles to Bayelsa’s development and were known sponsors and promoters of a climate of vicious politics, thuggery and mindless militancy, which gave Bayelsa a bad name.”
Follow Us