By Nathan Nwakamma
A political stakeholder in Sagbama Local Government Area (LGA) of Bayelsa, Chief Richard Kpodoh, is insisting that the zoning arrangement remains sacrosanct in the sharing of political offices in Bayelsa-West Senatorial District.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports the Bayelsa-West Senatorial District is made up of Sagbama and Ekeremor LGAs.
Kpodoh called on the leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Bayelsa to respect the zoning arrangement or risk a protest vote by the electorate.
He said that people in the area would continue to fight against what he called “the greedy interest of some politicians to scuttle the brotherly rotational zoning of National Assembly positions between the two LGAs.
Speaking with journalists on Monday in Yenagoa, Kpodoh berated Gov. Douye Diri for recently lobbying some people from the area to work for the re-election of former governor of the state and serving senator, Mr Seriake Dickson.
Kpodoh said that going by the zoning arrangement it was the turn of Ekeremor people to produce the next senator.
“Gov. Diri should understand that his plan to undermine the Ekeremor people is the beginning of the war against his second tenure election.
“Let Diri and Dickson tell us what he (Dickson) attracted to the area when he was a member of the House of Representatives and in his current tenure in the senate.
“Diri is only maternally an Ekeremor man and in Ijaw tradition “nobody dey answer mama name.
“Let him go and decide for the Kolokuma/Opokuma people if they would allow him to break their age-long zoning arrangements”, Kpodoh said.
He warned that the Sagbama/Ekeremor people would join the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) to reverse the political pendulum if Diri, Dickson and the PDP treated their threat with kid gloves.
He accused Dickson of amazing wealth while he was governor for only his family and a few cronies.
Kpodoh accused the present administration in the state of recruiting some fierce-looking youths as taskforce members, supervised by the Office of the Deputy Governor.
The taskforce members, according to him, operate 24 hours daily extorting money from transporters and commuters.
He called on Diri to learn from Ebonyi, Yobe and other states that were created alongside Bayelsa in 1996 but had left the state behind in terms of development.
“Look at Bola Tinubu. When the Federal Capital was moved away from Lagos to Abuja, people thought that Lagos economy would collapse.
“Tinubu proved them wrong and today Lagos economy is the strongest among all the states of the federation,“ he said.
Kpodo, a former Security Adviser to the Bayelsa government, made reference to Aba in Abia as a commercial centre that Diri should have in mind.
“They (Bayelsa government) recently inaugurated the media building and brought people from all over the country and lavished public funds for that purpose.
“That building cannot be put to use because it is not completed. Who are they fooling?, he said. (NAN)
