Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has boasted that his party will defeat the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the incumbent governor of Bayelsa State, Seriake Dickson, in the November 16, governorship election.
Speaking during a reconciliatory and peace meeting among the party’s candidate and the aggrieved aspirants with the national leadership of the party at the national secretariat on Thursday, Oshiomhole expressed confidence that victory was sure for the party’s candidate, David Lyon.
He described as ‘gutter language’ the manner the state governor, Dickson, was quoted to have spoken of the APC governorship candidate, taunting that his imminent defeat had beclouded his sense of judgement.
He, however, appealed to the aspirants that participated or could not participate in the primary election to see reasons to embrace peace ahead of the governorship election.
While lamenting that APC had been in opposition for a long time and PDP had dominated Bayelsa politics since 1999, Oshiomhole said the people of the state now desired a change.
Reacting to 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, the imminent defeat that awaits him and his party to overcloud his judgement as to resort to 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 the 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 labels 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 are sure to be afraid.
“So APC rejects and condemns in strong term, the raw language unbecoming of a governor, a man I otherwise admired, the way he has described 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 the 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, person, nor their candidate who is about to be defeated.
“We recognise 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,” he noted.
Reacting to 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 that have governed 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 hands over decently like a gentleman to our candidate – by the special grace of God, the next governor of Bayelsa State, David Lyon,” he prayed.