By Salo Adikumo
There is a rumour being sponsored by vested interest in informal circles in the Social that the former Governor and Senator representing Bayelsa West, His Excellency, Senator Henry Seriake Dickson, has directed his followers who lost out in the primaries of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to defect to the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
The propaganda is that four people who have defected to the SDP are doing so at the prompting of the former Governor.
As everyone knows over 90 percent of the people in government at the local and state levels including the Governor are his people.
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Even people from all the political parties have a right to treat him as their leader. It is therefore unfair to ascribe the actions of a few decamping members to him.
Nobody faced and managed such crisis of defection more than the former Governor in his days as the State leader of the PDP . Before and after primaries, he met with all groups, traditional rulers, opinion leaders, women, and youth groups, Government appointees persuading people and addressing grievances and making offers and promises and keeping same.
Even when people defected on the account of the emergence of the Governor, he engaged them and brought some back. Of all the 21 aspirants, none formally defected to the APC.
Everybody in Bayelsa knows that defections occur after primaries in the State in all the parties.
To those of us who have worked and are closely working with him we are not aware that the former Governor has given any such directive.
We advise those behind this rumour, which is clearly against internal cohesion within the PDP, to desist forthwith.
It has the dangerous potential to weaken the PDP and the state Government to the advantage of the opposition parties.
The former Governor is one of the key fathers of Bayelsa PDP and should not be dragged into such odious lies.
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We believe that the Governor and Party leaders are handling this fall out from the primaries through setting up a reconciliation committee which he has done.
As somebody who worked tirelessly for the emergence of this Government who has been sidelined and unfairly treated, I, like several others, are waiting for the Committee to interact with us.
Finally, I can categorically say that the rumour that the former Governor is defecting to the SDP is untrue, infantile and should be discountenanced.
