Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
About 5,000 members including 59 chieftains of the All Progressive Congress (APC) from the eight local government councils of Bayelsa State have defected back to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The returnees cited confusion, lack of focus and no desirable agenda for the Ijaw people as the reasons for them to dump the APC in the state.
Governor Henry Seriake Dickson who accompanied leaders of the PDP to receive the returnees at the party secretariat in Yenagoa said APC has shown to Nigerians and the Ijaw people that it has no agenda to make progress possible.
According to him many of the returnees were deceived to join the APC but have realize that the party is bereft of ideas and have decided to rejoin the PDP to contribute their quota to the development of Bayelsa state.
As regards the 2019 elections, Dickson assured party members not to panic as the PDP remains intact and would ensure the defeat of the APC in Bayelsa state.
He said “The PDP government in Bayelsa state under my watch has placed the state on the path of peace, prosperity, and development. Bayelsans are happy with the party. The PDP is the only party that has a developmental agenda for the Ijaw people.
“What we do in PDP is to strategise to win elections and after elections we work for the development of our people because we are politics to serve our people. The other party comes to kill our people because they lack vision; they have no agenda for our people expect to destroy what our founding fathers have built and what our government is consolidating. Any person who is deceived to contest election in 2019 on another platform other than the PDP will still lose because only PDP can win election in Bayelsa state”
Chairman of Bayelsa State chapter of People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Hon Moses Cloepas, has said only the party has the capacity to defeat Federal might as it did in 2016 when Governor Henry Seriake Dickson was re-elected against all odds.
According to him in 2019, the Chairman said PDP will re-enact its winning streak by sweeping the polls to demonstrate that Bayelsa is wholly a PDP state.
He said: “Bayelsa PDP is invincible. No force can defeat us. The APC deployed all the repressive apparatus to capture Bayelsa by hook or crook in 2016 but we deployed People’s power to re-elect Governor Seriake Dickson, a performing Governor, a visionary leader and leader of the party in the state. All of you returning to the party are welcome. You won’t suffer any loss or discrimination ”
Special Adviser, (Politics) to the Governor, Chief Fyneman Wilson said he and the PDP apparatchik in the state are working hard to mop up the remnant of the remaining tiny opposition in the state back to the PDP.