| Government House Bayelsa State | download as Document
Transcript
The Honorable member representing Segbma, Ekeremor Federal Constituency, the Honorable Frederick Yetiemone Agbedi, the chief of staff, Benson Agadaga, Government House. The Deputy Chief of Staff Government House, Former leader of the great assembly Peter Akpe. The principal secretary government house Iroro komonibo, my friend and compatriot, former member of the House of Representatives Gabriel Oyewife. My friend and brother, former Commissioner Delta State now special adviser to the Governor in Delta State, Frank omare. The former special adviser to the Governor on inter party, my colleagues, I welcome you all. My former colleagues, some of them aspirants, some transformed to be candidates and the chairmen of various political parties and gentle men of the press.
I want to welcome you to your own government house. The journey looked very difficult, the journey was torturous, the journey was a journey that am sure some of us even gave up, but because God was involved, no one can take the credit, no one made this Governor that is here, the only one who made this governor is the almighty God and that is why in my interaction with all the media outlets, I have Christian myself as a miracle Governor. We all tried our best to our human limit and from that point, God took over. I don’t think that it has happened in this country before that less than 24 hours to the swearing in, where people where even practicing how to take salute. Less than 24 hours judgment was given and they immediately disbanded what they were doing and most of them left this state in droves and so we must give the glory to God.
We should not take that glory, we must give that glory to God almighty. I didn’t make myself and nobody made me except the almighty God. So we give him all the glory but we will also not forget to recognize our days in the wilderness. We will not fail to recognize that. We held several meetings, not so?
We were strategizing on how to win that election, and our strategies are very okay until that faithful day on the 16th November when a coup d’état was plotted against our party and against the people of Bayelsa State and against all of you who belong to other parties. It came to a point in Southern Ijaw I was told that those who are going down, when you say you are APC, the security will allow you to go. immediately they identify you as PDP, they arrest you. So it was a coup. The PDP won with the support of most of you who supported the PDP. So when they saw that the PDP was winning, that was when they have to now contact the GOC 6th division and the Nigerian army came down from Port Harcourt.
The Nigerian army came down and stopped the army division that was in Yenagoa because they felt that those people will not cooperate with them and then, the people the IG described as fake police and I know they will remain fake for the rest of their lives but if the IG himself accept and say policemen who are fake policemen came into Bayelsa to perpetrate that violence that they perpetrated at the collation centers, local government collation centers and brought in fake results.
They targeted southern Ijaw; they brought in one hundred and twenty thousand (120,000) votes. When we went to verify because we petition to the tribunal, tribunal gave us the grace to verify, when we went to verify, the ballot papers we saw were not more than thirty five thousand (35,000) meanwhile, they wrote the result of one hundred and twenty thousand (120,000) and because of what happened in Southern Ijaw, we wanted to go to Nembe they started to protest that we cannot do that one in Nembe again. Until I have to take the REC to the public, I took the REC to the Nigerian media, finally they allowed Nembe but because of what they have seen in Southern Ijaw, they went immediately to cover up their tracks in Nembe.
We took on Ogbia, they claimed they have their fifty-eight thousand votes, by the time we finished verifying Ogbia, the vote there were not more than fifteen to seventeen thousand ballot paper. When you say you voted, it is ballot papers na, they were looking for ballot papers all over the place they couldn’t find and so because they saw what we did, now we were the complainers overnight they also said they also want to verify the votes of Kolokuma Opokuma and Sagbama local government.
We first complained, how come you people have also turn to be complainant? See, that is the type of election we went through and then they took wrong narratives to the Nigerian media and public as though we where not popular, as though we didn’t have people who supported us, as if they have the whole support and they thrive in violence while we were peaceful. So today that I’m Governor of Bayelsa State not through the ballot which ordinarily we would have won and I still insist we did win. But God who saw our heart, God who was listening to very silent conversation, God who was looking at Bayelsa State said no, this cannot happen and so came down himself to stop them and up till today, most of them are in shock and disbelief.
And so, my dear friend and my dear brothers of inter party, I was delighted I was looking out a date that I will meet particularly my colleague candidates, I would have invited them and I think I will still invite them. Those of them who worked with us but when I was told that the inter party was coming; I said okay let them come and so am also happy like you to receive you in your own government house.
For us, this is your own government and we must start now to preach love, we must start now to preach reconciliation, we must start now to preach peace and we must start now to re-orientate our opponent that politics is not about killing people, is not about destruction of lives and properties. I just had a parley with my party stakeholders from Nembe this morning, and you know what happened in Nembe when I went for campaign on the 13th of November, 2019 and so you are going to help us to re-orientate the thinking of our people particularly in Nembe local government area where we saw that high degree of violence, no matter how angry you are, you have no right to take another person’s life and so, we will run an open government, we will run a transparent government, we will run a government that you can see, you can feel that will be palpable to you and we will run a government that will be open to your criticisms and your contributions. But please do not criticize negatively, try and be constructive if you want to criticize. You know there is a language you can tell somebody that you are a fool and the person will be angry at you and want to fight you, there is another language that you can use in telling the person you are a fool and the person will look at you and say how do you mean, I don’t understand you he would want to understand. So there are two ways always to a coin, you don’t go direct to call somebody a fool, maybe you can advise. These are two different things and so, we are open to you, it’s your state, and it’s our state.
The bottom line is that we want to see Bayelsa develop. I am only here to serve you, God has brought me to serve you and I believe that all of you have your own ideas in your parties of how you want this state to develop. We are yet to actually kick off fully, you can see we have a very skeletal governmental presence on this side so when you talk about appointment, we will. But our government will be running a very lean appointive government. Very lean, the reason being that we want you to help us to educate our people that we can not continue to depend on the government of Bayelsa State.
When we have fever, it’s Bayelsa State Government, if our Wives are putting to bed, it is the state government. We owe it as a duty to earn a living and to earn a living means that we must work and that when you earn money when you work, you are proud and you are happy that you worked and you earn money and so government will like to support businesses, government will like to create opportunities for wealth creation and for job creation. Government will like to create opportunities for youths to acquire skills, while we were campaigning, I kept saying that we do not have a local economy. I gave an example of shops and supermarkets, if our brothers from the east close down their supermarket, their shops in Yenagoa here, how many of us have shops where we can go and buy even small things like soap. So, our people should now begin the orientation of going into trading, buying and selling, or going into aquaculture and agriculture.
Early in the morning you go out there you see trucks coming in from Delta state including poultry products, can’t we produce egg in Bayelsa, can’t we have poultry farms in Bayelsa, can’t we have fish farms in Bayelsa, can’t we produce plantain? Yes we need to do more in plantain, we need to do more in cassava. In fact, Bayelsa State is seen as the fish belt of Nigeria and so, you and I have a duty to go on this re-orientation of our people and our thinking so that our people can earn a living and the government will only support. For instance, we are looking out for CBN loans on agriculture and very soon, that loans will come to us.
I am sure latest by the end of next week we will have that loan, I am not going to play politics with the loan, I am going to give it to farmers and so the only way you can now benefit from CBN and the Bayelsa State Government on that loan is for you to own a farm. Am loyal, will not give you that loan, it runs into billion and so please tell them it is not late they can start even today, they can start tomorrow to own a farm, it doesn’t mean you we start with a mighty one, you can start with one small farm. The Ministry will come around and look at it and recommend you for the loan and so, am not going to give loan to us who are politicians, if you are a politician and you have a farm, you will benefit from the loan.
So my brothers and sisters, where is that our colleague from Ogbia, it’s she not here? Okay that woman you know. like you rightly noted, the former governor gave several appointments, from the beginning I don’t think any governor has given appointment the way the former governor gave appointments but you see we all depended on it. In fact, some people even left us to the opposing party. See power comes only from God, power comes only from God otherwise, I wouldn’t be here as Governor so, we as a people, we must cut out our road, we must cut out our road and we are left behind, we are left behind, you know it, I know it. We can’t sit down here to be people who will be consumers only, all we do is to consume, can’t we produce, we can isn’t it, that’s what am talking about, let us be those who will produce, let us produce for others to consume. Let our state not become a dumping ground for every type of product. The other day, I was listening to the radio and IYC was saying that there are some supermarket that were selling expired products, let not be that type of state, let us be a state that God willing will even export to other countries. Thank God the former governor has built an international cargo airport and we are working on it seriously to get the approval from the Ministry of aviation so that the airport will be put to use. In no distance date from now, we are very sure we will get that approval and our airport will be put to use.
So I want to call on you to say that you have more work to do now, now that the party you supported, the candidate you supported have resumed and assumed the leadership of this state. You have to pray more because this government believes in prayers, believes in God to open up and diversify resources, revenue for our State so that we can even have an internally generated revenue possibly that we can use without waiting for federal allocation and so, all hands must be on deck, you have the same role to play that I have to play even though am the captain of the ship. So again let me thank you for this visit and I believe that we will work as partners, I have noted all the request you have made particularly about the coaster boss and providing a secretariat, I have noted it, we have just come to begin and as we keep going, you will ear from me.
Once again let me thank you for coming, I appreciate you for coming and believe that we will work hand in glove to ensure that our state will be in the committee of states as one of those that is productive, as one of those that will be respected in Nigeria and beyond. Thank you and God bless you.