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Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Bayelsa State governor, Hon Henry Seriake Dickson says that he would be leaving behind very big shoes for his successor after eight years of sustained efforts to develop the state.
He said that his administration had raised the bar of performance for succeeding governments by making deliberate, painstaking sacrifices and ambitious investments in the interest of the state.
A statement by the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Soriwei Fidelis quoted Dickson as saying this while speaking with newsmen shortly after commissioning the Bayelsa Golf Course at the Tourism Island in Yenagoa.
He said that the state needed concentrated-developmental action having been created from the most deprived and least developed part of Rivers State.
The governor who listed some of his administration’s big ticket projects to include the Bayelsa International Airport, the 18-hole Golf Course adjudged by many as one of the best in the country, the Polo Club, among many others in education, health, agriculture, expressed the confidence that posterity would be fair to him.
According to the governor, the Restoration Government under his leadership had laid a solid foundation for any patriotic leadership to further the developmental aspirations of the state.
The governor said that virtually all the ambitious projects in the state were initiated and completed by his administration unlike what obtains other states which were created earlier and developed by the Federal Government.
Governor Dickson restated the need for the incoming government to make continuity and patriotism its watchword with a view to moving the state forward.
Underscoring the peculiarities of Bayelsa, he expressed satisfaction with his achievements in office, noting, however, that no government could completely tackle the development needs of a state or country in four or eight years.
Governor Dickson who decried the long period of neglect the state suffered in the hands of the Federal Government, promised to continually contribute towards the common good of the state.
He said: “This is the first time we are having a golf course, so when some governors who have everything built for them by Federal Government and by the whole country, over hundred years, talk, they don’t seem to understand what we are struggling to do here.
“My advice to the incoming government will be to nurture and support these dreams. These are not dreams that ordinary people can immediately relate with. So I want to tell those coming behind, I have tried my best; if there are things they don’t understand, of course I will be available to explain and advise; it’s not ordinary when you see a governor converting a building he could have stayed with his family and turn it to a hotel, and that has been done.
“In Bayelsa, we are leading a deliberate development effort of a deprived underdeveloped area at a difficult financial period and I have tried my best despite that; so we expect that the new people coming in should brace up; there’s plenty of work; it’s not just cheap talk, it’s not propaganda, it’s not blackmail…governance and pushing ahead and sustaining this development and adding more improving in all sectors, health care, education, infrastructure, stability and law and order is a big job. So I can only wish Bayelsa the best.”
