By Lukman Olabiyi
Bayelsa Mandate Group (BMG) has advised a former Governor Timipre Sylva to be objective in his assessment of the administration of Governor Douye Diri.
BMG advised Sylva not to allow partisan politics to becloud his sense of judgment.
The group, in a statement by its leader, Chief Nazuan Godfrey, asked Sylva, who is a former Minister of State for Petroleum, to act as a true statesman by acknowledging the giant strides of the Diri administration in the last four years instead of the baseless criticisms he has embarked upon.
According to Nazuan, what interests the people of Bayelsa, the only homogenous Ijaw state in the country, is its development and the ability of the leaders to make life better for the citizens, this the group insisted is what Diri has been doing.
Taking a swipe at the performance of Sylva when he was governor of the state and when he served as minister, BMG said it was nothing to write home about when compared with the achievements under Governor Diri.
The group lamented that Sylva left Bayelsa underdeveloped and littered with abandoned projects.
They berated Sylva for obliterating a major legacy of Okilo by selling the power turbines for peanuts.
BMG also accused Sylva of inaugurating projects that were not completed and recalled how the late President Umaru Musa Yar’dua was invited to inaugurate an uncompleted plant with a stand-by generator, adding that it was in fact the last official engagement of the late President.
The group stated that Sylvia’s desperation and obsession to get back to Creek Haven with claims that Bayelsa is owing him four years of governance is misplaced and provocative.
The group claimed that the 500-bed hospital started by Chief DSP Alamieyeseigha at Imgbi Road was turned into a cash cow by officials of the Sylva administration under the guise of remodeling and Public, Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement.
“After wasting so much money, the project was abandoned with the excuse that it was too bogus to manage, so nothing was done.”