Bayelsa State Governor, Hon. Henry Seriake Dickson has once again called on all Niger Delta leaders to close ranks and rededicate themselves to the development of the Niger Delta in order to change the narrative of underdevelopment plaguing the region.
The governor said it was worrisome that privileged Bayelsans and by extension those from other Niger Delta states who occupied and are still occupying various political offices would prefer to concern themselves with mundane things rather than the development of the region.
The governor stated this yesterday at the Government House, Yenagoa while addressing the board and management of the Niger Delta Commission (NDDC) led by the chairman, Sen. Victor Ndoma-Egba who paid him a courtesy call.
Dickson therefore charged the new NDDC board not to follow same path as the Niger Delta region is highly in need of development, lamenting that over sixty years after oil was first discovered in Bayelsa most of the communities with abundant resources are still not connected by road to the state capital.
“Till today, 61 years after the discovery of oil and gas, there is no road to get to Brass Oil terminal and even as we speak that is where oil is being lifted day and night. No road as we speak to Oporoma, Koluama. We are not a happy people. No investment on human capacity development. Young people from our region have all become militants who carry AK-47 rifles and these are young generation that should have helped develop our land which we have now lost”.
“The only thing they are good for is to struggle for surveillance contracts while others smile to the banks locally and internationally. People flaunting oilwells and parading wealth rooted in oil wealth acquisition. What people sit in Abuja call oil blocks are ancestral properties of people of the Niger Delta.”
While congratulating them on their well deserved appointments, Dickson also expressed his administration’s readiness to partner with the commission to achieve greater goal and advised that they should concentrate on critical projects in the state and leave the building of schools and health facilities for his government which it has been embarking on with remarkable success since assumption of office in 2012.
He pointed out that one of the greatest challenges the NDDC has always had is politicizing its activities to suit the whims and caprices of some individuals and warned that if the present board allows itself to be used, then posterity will judge them wrongly.
We’re in a hurry for development, Dickson tells NDDC
