Governor Douye Diri’s henchmen in Bayelsa State Lucky Ogua and Special Adviser on Political matters, High Chief Collins Kokodia, have been sponsoring and planning to sponsor more candidates in opposition parties. It is the two who got candidates to run for offices in the state house of assembly under APGA and APC.
The Secretary to the State Government’s younger brother is the APC candidate in the governor’s local government of Kolokuma Opokuma against the PDP candidate. The Secretary has also sponsored other candidates in Labour Party and is fully controlling the Bayelsa State Labour Party.
Even in the governor’s local government, Lucky Ogbua and Cocodia were funding the APC candidate Etolor who lost out. They gave him 50m but unfortunately, Timipre Sylva got wind of it, shut it down and gave the ticket to his trusted boy, Hon. Wilson from Ekeremor town.
With the failure of Etolor, they went back to holding secret meetings in the government house to see how they can give support to APC candidates against PDP candidates. This is the scheme they have been working on for the past two months.
Everyone knows they are also reaching out to one of the governor’s relations, a lady who is the Senatorial Candidate for the YPP. They are funding her and supporting her massively to go round and campaign but investigation shows that even in-spite of their support in that senatorial district, there’s little or nothing they can do to change the outcome but this is the game going on.
The SSG and the governor’s team, SA Political are sponsoring so many candidates against the PDP. It is on record that it was Governor Diri who personally instructed the APGA candidate in Yenagoa Constituency 2 to go to APGA and clinch the ticket. He is the governor’s preferred candidate as against the the chief whip who he pretends to be supporting.
It is people in the government house also who prevailed on the candidate to go to APC against the House Leader but investigation show that the house leader will eventually win.
Investigation also revealed that Uwaikimo, the APGA candidate for Yenagoa Constituency 2 is being sponsored by the governor and his team while they are pretending to be with the PDP candidate.
As a result of the internal party wrangling in major parties, many loyal party members are now seeking for an alternative platforms to contest.
In Edo, governor Obaseki and all his people have fielded candidates in Labour Party and are only pretending to be in the PDP.
In Delta state, the major fight going on between the Ibori camp and Okowa’s camp has led to the core Ibori loyalist in person of Chief Gbagi Kenneth going to the SDP to be the gubernatorial candidate with large following and with the support of Ibori’s team.
In Rivers state, as a result of the split in APC and the massive resignation, the Magnus Abe led faction and others are moving to the SDP where Magnus is expected to be nominated by the SDP as it flag bearer. All the big wigs and dissatisfied from Wike’s system in Rivers state are gravitating towards SDP. In the next assembly election, SDP might populate everywhere.
SDP and other parties are gaining so much momentum in all the states. PDP’s dominance May be a foregone era.
Just yesterday in Akwa Ibom, the most popular gubernatorial aspirant under PDP, Senator Bassey resigned from the party to go pick up YPP ticket and with the court cases against the PDP candidate and the certificate problem, the chances are that there might be a major upset.
So, PDP is in a major problem in the South and the country as a whole because of the infighting and winner takes all mentality.
Fortunately for the PDP, last weekend election was a morale booster but even that morale booster is under threat as the APC Tinubu Element have vowed to take the matters to lawful conclusion at the Supreme Court and even that could have been resolved by the party leadership but there was division which they did not handle well leading to Babayemi going to court to seek redress.
There’s a finding that delegates that elected Adeleke who eventually won were not the right delegates and this may be dangerous finding. The court dismissed this babayemi suite because he had tithe right delegates but wrong venue.
This is a lesson even for Bayelsans especially those who did their assembly and other primaries outside the venue prescribed by law. Governor Diri and his few accolades who have for three years been fighting needless war of division and exclusion really h he ave enough in their hands to work with While Timipre Sylva getting ready in the APC to come against the divided PDP.
Bayelsa PDP In Confusion Over Defections – Politics – Nigeria (nairaland.com)