You’re ingrates, PDP tells defectors

The Peoples Democratic Party, Bayelsa State chapter, has described the decision of Chief Alex Ekiotenne and his followers to dump the party for the All Progressives Congress, as not only embarrassing, but disgraceful.

The PDP said such defection was motivated by greed, stressing that Ekiotenne and his supporters were people who had benefitted immensely from the Seriake Dickson administration in the state.

However, the party in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Osom Makbere, described Ekiotenne as a self-centred politician.

He stated that Ekiotenne, who is the Publicity Secretary,  Bayelsa Peoples Consultative Assembly, had allegedly benefitted so much from the present administration, in terms of award of contracts and appointments of his siblings, relations and close associates.

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Calling on him to tell Bayelsans the truth and the main reasons for his sudden cross carpeting, the party said his action was being influenced by greed and selfishness.

It noted that the self-styled spokesman of BPCA was defecting to the All Progressives Congress because the Governor turned down his request to hire one of his guest houses for a monthly fee of N150m, as was the case during the previous administration in the state.

The State Governor, according to the statement, saw the hiring of the said guest house as unnecessary and a waste of the scarce resources of the state and turned it down.

It pointed out that it was for this reason that Ekiotenne abandoned the PDP for the APC.

The BPCA spokesman had, during a news conference during the week, accused Dickson of poor management of the state’s resources.

Ekiotenne who, until the news conference, was Honorary Special Adviser to Dickson, alleged that lack of strategic planning, prioritisation and a result-oriented advisory system had given productivity and sustained performance of Dickson’s administration as serious impairment.

He had also alleged that Dickson’s administration had squandered its political capital and that the psyche of the people of the state had broken down irretrievably under the governor.

He had stated, “While productivity was expected to rise, there was a steady decline in productivity and good performance of government in almost all sectors, which has inexorably led us to the present state of gloom.

“The decline in federal revenue is a universal issue that all states have to grapple with as a result of the drop in oil revenue. But can we justifiably attribute all our woes to the drop in federal allocation? Successive governments of the state got carried away with the fat federal allocations over the years and so did not think of developing the industrial, agricultural and commercial sectors of the economy that would have been able to promote internally generated revenue in leaps and bounds.

“Bayelsans believe that if consultations and strategic planning, including prioritisation had been sustained, we would not have found ourselves where we are today.”