Allow us vote our choice candidates, group tells Dickson

The Resistance Against Bad Leadership Group, an independent Civil Society Organization based in Bayelsa state, has warned against what it termed “plans to bully the people of Bayelsa into submitting to not vote candidates of their choice”.

Addressing journalists during a press conference in Yenagoa, leader of the group, Otobo Osbourne, advised the State Governor, Honorable Henry Seriake Dickson, to embrace the principles of democracy and mass support that brought him to office.

According to Otobo, “Nations and people rise and fall on the quality of leadership, as a function of the followership, available to them. The developed nations we so admire have done so, progressively over time, due to the foresight of great leaders who captained the ship of state in a forward direction by bettering the lot of their people”.

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He further stated that the Governor of Bayelsa state, Hon Henry Seriake Dickson “rode on a crest wave of expectations and aspirations only to come into office and crush these due to selfish interests and a desire to own the state and keep it perpetually under his stranglehold. History tells us that all leaders who tried to hold their followers down eventually fell along with their houses of cards and the attempt to impose candidates at all levels, on a people as indomitable as the Ijaw nation, can only at best be described as a pipe dream”.

“The Ijaw nation”, according to Otobo knows who her real leaders are and at every given level the people have shown time and again that they will resist any imposition that doesn’t represent the best of them. The Ijaw nation has rejected the intimidation and blackmail campaign mounted by Dickson and his so called ‘restoration caucus’ against the true leaders of Ijaw land.”

The activist also submitted that as the 2019 elections are approaching, “the game is up and all his plans orchestrated in the last seven years are now in the open, the only option left to Dickson is to give it up and go into a well deserved retirement at the end of his second tenure as governor. No amount of trying to whip up sentiments around respected personalities will work on the people who are tired of his anti people projects and inability to fulfil basic government responsibilities consistently”.

He concluded saying, “Dickson must be conscious of how he is going to be remembered when he exits the scene, he should stay away from our leader, Goodluck Jonathan”.