Leader of the All Progressive Congress, APC, in Bayelsa State, Chief Timipre Sylva and other prominent members of the party were conspicuosly absent as ex-minister of state for Agriculture and National Resources, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri made his formal governorship declaration and opened his campaign office in Yenagoa, the state capital.
However, his boss, the former minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Chief Audu Ogbe, was in attendance.
Declaring his ambition, Senator Lokpobiri said having served as pioneer speaker of Bayelsa State House of Assembly, two term senator and minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, he considered himself eminently qualified to rescue Bayelsa State from inept administration of the present government as the reasons for any government is to provide security and welfare for the citizenry, but all of these have become a mirage and its incumbent on him to address these anomalies.
“In Bayelsa State the level of poverty and hunger is unprecedented. It is the darkest state in Africa,” he said.
According to him due to lack of vision and ideas by the present PDP led government, Bayelsa despite its monthly allocation of N14 billion remained the poorest, most backward state in infrastructural development and its only APC government under him that would restore the past glory of the slogan glory of all lands.
He decried the insecurity, hunger and poverty that have been inflicted on Bayelsans of late and called on them to vote him into Creek Haven as the next governor who will develop Bayelsa economy beyond oil.