by Chi Ibe

As we announced exclusively online a few minutes ago, the People’s Democratic Party’s candidate, Henry Seriake Dickson has been announced the Governor-elect of Bayelsa.

According to the returning officer, University of Port Harcourt vice-chancellor Joseph Ajienka, the PDP won with 417,509. Its closest rival was the CPC’s Famous Daunemigha with 23,548 votes. The CAP candidate, Imoro Kubor won 22,534 votes and Kemela Okara of the CAN took 9,627 votes.

The “anointed” candidate of President Goodluck Jonathan, a former governor of the state, Dickson is a lawyer who has served the state as Commissioner of Justice and is a House of Representatives member.

He has pin-pointed tourism, infrastructure and human capital development as areas of focus for his government.

In a recent interview, he said of his “Restoration Agenda”, “Restoration means restoring the lost glory. There was glory. It was lost at a time and we are now restoring it. The components of the restoration agenda are many. We don’t really have time. What I will not fail to do is the priority, education we have in the restoration agenda. As I mentioned at the rally it is the most important challenge facing this society.

“This society unknown to many is actually sitting on a time bomb. Not just Bayelsa State so many states in the Niger Delta. There are so many places, so many societies, you can’t even go there. They have lost those communities and so many generations of young people to illiteracy, wrong and unproductive education and unemployment. We are going to massively tackle that in a revolutionary manner. And then invest in human capital development.

“Then infrastructure, we are going to commence that. We will work round the clock to ensure that people have good road. Then the issue of value orientation is also very important because no matter the amount of money a state government has if the right values are not there, if there is a leadership problem, you can’t really do much. We’ve got a lot to do to educate these people.  Also, security is also very important. We actually want to showcase this state as a major tourism destination.”

UPDATE: The headline has been changed to reflect the final figure.

Oluwapelumi