National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has expressed confidence that the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Bayelsa state will be defeated, assuring that his party’s candidate, David Lyon ‘is more better.’
Oshiomhole also deacribed as ‘gutter language’ the way governor Seriaki Dickson, was quoted to have spoken of the APC governorship candidate.
Speaking at a reconciliation meeting he called Thursday in Abuja, to bring about peace among the Bayelsa APC stakeholders and the aggrieved governorship aspirants, the National Chairman, said election business call for unity and team work, adding that “if their is one business that calls for unity is election.”
He appealed to those who participated and those who could not participate at the primary election to see reasons to embrace peace ahead of the governorship election.
While lamenting that APC has been in opposition for a long time and PDP has dominated Bayelsa politics since 1999, Oshiomhole said the people of the state now desire a change.
Reacting to governor Dickson’s comments on the APC candidate, Oshiomhole said: “Let me use this opportunity to reply directly to my friend, Governor Dickson of Bayelsa. I think he has allowed his fears, lack of self confidence, his imminent defeat that await him and his party to over cloud his judgement as to resorting in the use of inelegant language and uncouth statement to describe one of his own and a fellow citizen of Bayelsa.
“When a governor describes one of his own purely on the account of his political differences, using name of terrorists and such things like that, then he has missed it already.
And I can understand his fears, if people who go to borrow lebels and assume that they are the leaders of the Ijaws and that they are the lions, when they see the real and authentic lion, they ate sure to be afraid.
“So APC rejects and condemn in strong term the raw language unbecoming of a governor, by a man I otherwise admired, the way he has describe our candidate.
“We will not come to his own level. On this occasion, we will invoke a popular statement made by Michelle Obama at the peak of the last presidential election in US when she said “when they go low, we fly high”. So when Dickson goes low, we will fly high. we will not join him in using gutter language to describe neither his office or his person, or even their candidate who is about to be defeated.
“We recognize he has a right to be selected by his party, we believe our candidate is better than his candidate and we believe he will provide, better, popular-driven, people-oriented governance, not elitist governance for the people of Bayelsa state.”
On why more educated people don’t govern the people, Oshiomhole said: “That is why around the world, I don’t know if you know how many professors have govern America, Britian, France and Israel or any of the democracies?
“It is the extent to which you can connect to the ordinary person, you share their vision and pain, you grow from the community and have been as an ordinary person as them. Therefore, they don’t need to tell you what their problems are, because you have lived through those problems with them and i think those are the qualities of our candidate which is invoking fears into the heart of my friend, Dickson.
“Let me assure him (Dickson), we will not go low as he has chosen to go but we will rather go high and higher until he packs out of government house and handover decently like a gentleman to our candidate, by the special grace of God, the next governor of Bayelsa state, David Lyon.”
