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Tag: Nembe Local Government

  • Confusion as INEC retrieves 23 missing card readers in Bayelsa

    …Begs thieves to return 46 others

     

    There was confusion in Bayelsa State ahead of the forthcoming election on Saturday following the inability of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to retrieve all the 69 missing card readers.

    The commission declared 69 card readers missing shortly after conducting the Presidential and National Assembly elections and begged persons in their possession to return them.

    But it was gathered that out of the missing number 23 were returned by unknown persons while 46 were still with unknown politicians.

    Some politicians were unhappy at the development raising fears that without retrieving all the stolen card readers, the electoral process would be compromised.

    They were also unhappy at the inability of the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Monday Udoh to give full disclosures of the circumstances that led to disappearance of the card readers and the identities of persons who returned the first 23.

    But Udoh said Thursday in Yenagoa that he had declared a two-day amnesty to persons withholding the readers.

    Speaking during the stakeholders’ meeting with leaders of political parties, the REC explained that out of the 24 missing card readers in Nembe Local Government area, only 14 were recovered.

    Read Also: INEC, security chiefs meet ahead of polls

    He said in Sagbama out of eight, three had been recovered, Southern Ijaw out of 24 only two were returned while in Yenagoa out of six, only three had been retrieved.

    Udoh commended the Civil Liberty Organisation (CLO), religious leaders, community chiefs, youths, women groups and other stakeholders for persuading the card reader thieves to return them.

    He said that INEC would continue to perform its roles as an unbiased umpire in elections conducted in the state.

    The REC also urged the people in the state to forego incidents of the past elections and eschew violence for a better election in the state.

    He said that election was not a war but a process for leaders to emerge and queried: “If those you are to lead are all dead what is the gain?’

    “Election is not war. Where there is peace you find progress and development. So by the time you kill those you are to lead what is the gain and who will you lead?

    ”Let us all allow peace to reign in the state, before, during and after the elections. 85 per cent of the sensitive materials are already in the Central Bank and we cross-checked them with all party agents to show we are transparent”, he said.

    Also speaking, the Administrative Secretary of the commission, Mr. Nduh Sampson, said it was time to allow the people own the electioneering process, adding that the process required a collective and collaborative work.

    He also said that everyone must come together to be part of the history to change the narrative of violence to a peaceful and transparent election in the state.

  • No election in Nembe wards, PDP candidates insist

    Candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the just-concluded Presidential and National Assembly election in Bayelsa State at the weekend insisted that no election held in the seven wards of Nembe-Bassambiri, Nembe Local Government Area of the state.

    The candidates said they were surprised that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) still went ahead to announce results, which they claimed were written without election by leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Speaking at the PDP state secretariat, Yenagoa, the candidates, who contested elections in the affected wards said there was no basis for INEC to accept results from Nembe-Bassambiri where elections could not hold.

    Persons, who narrated their ordeals, were the PDP candidates for Brass-Nembe Federal Constituency, Marie Ebikake and Bayelsa East Senatorial District, Izagara Ipigansi.

    Ebikake said other areas where elections held in the senatorial district, the PDP defeated the APC and wondered how 41,000 votes were ‘manufactured’ from Nembe-Bassambiri to upturn the victory of the PDP.

    She said: “You all are aware that the 22nd, specifically in Bassambiri, there was serious shoot out throughout the night and everybody ran helter skelter. Some people moved to Nembe City while some people rushed down to other communities.

    Surprisingly they said election took place on Saturday and we thought it was a joke”.

    She said one military officer with the rank of a major aided the opposition to write the controversial  results describing him as a disgrace to the military.

    Also speaking, Ipigansi, said he could not vote in his unit because electoral materials did not get to Nembe-Bassambiri.

    He said after all their efforts to get the materials proved abortive, they discovered that the materials were diverted to a private hotel under the supervision of security operatives.

    Read Also: Gas explosion sacks Bayelsa communities

    He said: “There were no materials. I can attest to that because I was not giving the opportunity to see the materials and to cast my vote. Bassambiri protested and we called people to record and take video clips of what happened at the various units where people waited in vain to cast their votes.

    So as a candidate I did not participate, only to be told on the 24th of January that results had been prepared to be submitted. I was no giving the opportunity to vote in my Constituency 3, which comprises wards 11, 12 and 13. There was no election.

    “In Brass, I won APC by almost 7,000 votes. In Nembe local government in constituency 1 where election was conducted I won APC by almost 3,000 votes. So you can imagine that in my own constituency and my own community that has ward 11, the highest voting strength in that local government, I didn’t have one vote. This is surprising.

    “So I am surprised that where election did not hold, result were compiled and submitted. We are pleading that INEC should have a rerun of election in Nembe Bassambiri. If  they are popular let them come and contest”, he said.

    Also, the Commissioner for Education, Jonathan Obuebite, said the results relied upon by INEC to declare candidates of the APC winners would not stand.

    He said: “Whatever result you see that have been used to declare any candidate should be disregarded because we know we are to meet in court, and definitely the law will have is course and the truth will manifest and the rightful candidate that won the election will be declared or re-run election will be conducted in those 7 wards.

    “Let it be very clear to the world that there was no election Nembe constituency 2 and Nembe constituency 3. Now the big question is how come they allow those results to be declared? How come they did not probe the card readers to confirm that indeed there was no accreditation?”

  • Bayelsa stakeholders allege imbalance in graduate recruitment

    Stakeholders from Nembe Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, at the weekend accused the state’s Civil Service Commission of shortchanging their council in the just concluded recruitment of 1000 graduates into the civil service.

    The stakeholders under the auspices of Nembe Se Congress (NSC) claimed that the exercise designed by the state Governor, Seriake Dickson, to lift embargo on employment by giving jobs to graduates, was a charade.

    Presenting the group’s position in Yenagoa, the Chairman, NSC, Prof. Monday Godwin-Egein, said persons empanelled to anchor the selection process demonstrated gross incompetence.

    Godwin-Egein said the state governor wanted the commission to work out sound criteria for an equitable distribution of the positions to all the local government areas.

    “There seems to have been no such measure adopted to guide the recruitment process. Otherwise, the set standards or procedures were violated by the very people saddled with the responsibility of anchoring the process”, he said.

    He alleged that the result of the recruitment showed fraud and gross insincerity tailored to shortchange the Bayelsa East Senatorial District especially Nembe and Brass local government areas.

    A copy of the results presented by the group showed that Brass and Nembe had 86 employees each while Ekeremor had 143, Kolokuma-Opokuma 103, Ogbia 119, Sagbama 163, Southern Ijaw 164 and Yenagoa 154.

    But Godwin-Egein said: “Nembe Se Congress takes exception to this abuse of process that casts our constituency as backward and behind other areas in the state in educational achievements.

    “We condemn all tendencies of insincerity of one group to another as seem to have played out in this sad exercise of a lopsided, grossly abused and very provocative recruitment into our civil service.

    “We hope our governor will look into the so-called recruitment result with the eyes of a statesman and with fairness and correct the errors. The governor should also summon the team empaneled to carry out this exercise and tell them that the Ijaw dream is prone to fractures and failures”.

    Godwin-Egein  said the group deliberately refused to draw comparisons on the basis of figures allocated to each local government, but wondered why the combine figures for Nembe and Brass were less than the figure for a small local government area.

    Describing the outcome as clannish, he said: “It is like telling the world that while our children in Nembe Se slept, those of our brothers in other clans were up and toiling upward at night.

    “Nembe does not need this backlash so carelessly inflicted on us. We want justice. We want fair play in the ordering of our collective destiny”, he said.

    But the Chairman, Bayelsa Civil Service Commission, Dr. Peter Singabele, said the recruitment followed followed best practice.

    Speaking when Dickson presented appointment letters to the beneficiaries, Singabele insisted that the process was transparent adding that out of the 23,000 persons that sent in their applications, 21,000 persons qualified to write the job examination.

    He said: “This is the very first time the governor is engaging in mass recruitment. The exercise is purely on merit. When the results were released few days ago there was jubilation in Swali market by the women who said they never knew that their children could get a job without knowing anybody in this state.

    “The employment process was like a marathon race that started in June last year. Over 23,000 applications were received. At end of the screening exercise, about 21,000 were qualified to write the first exam and after that using 70 per cent as the cut off mark, 4,824 passed and went into the last stage of the exam.

    “We hired the Niger Delta University (NDU) as the consultant and the number the governor directed were selected based on merit”.

     

     

  • Opposition leaders distributing arms in Bayelsa, says Dickson

    Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, on Saturday accused security agencies of aiding opposition leaders in the state to stockpile illegal arms ahead of the forthcoming general elections.

    Dickson, who was visibly angry while addressing the state in a live radio broadcast, said despite all intelligence and reports he tendered to security commanders, those involved in illegal arms were still allowed to work free.

    The governor, who mentioned specific names of opposition leaders, said the report available to him indicated that arms were being distributed to cultists to cause mayhem and unleash violence on innocent people at the poll.

    He mentioned Brass, Southern Ijaw, Ekeremor and Nembe local government areas as where such arms distribution were ongoing without any efforts of security agencies to investigate and arrest persons behind it.

    He said Nigeria would be qualified for a failed state if people were denied the opportunity to participate in a free and fair process of electing their leaders.

    “A nation where security agencies will collude with criminals and terrorists known for bringing arms to disrupt the election is a failed country”, he said adding that the same characters known for electoral violence since 1999 had continued to destabilise the state.

    Dickson said having managed the most trying period in the state’s and resisted intimidation from opposition leaders, he was worried about theatre of the state after his departure.

    Read Also: Sylva to Dickson: you have no fear of God

    He said after losing the last governorship election and failing at litigations, the opposition leaders took a decision to undermine his government and destabilise the state.

    The governor alleged that the opposition leaders with support from other external forces were planning to turn the state to the Sambisa Forest by tampering with the security architecture through frequent redeployment of security commanders.

    Dickson lamented that most of the opposition leaders were using their position as surveillance contractors to arm cultists for electoral purposes.

    The governor immediately inaugurated a committee of inquiry headed by retired Justice Margaret Akpomimieye with the mandate to investigate the activities of the surveillance contractors in the state and report to the government within 21 days.

    He said even if the security agencies failed to act on the expected report of the committee, he would file it in state’s archive for posterity.

    The governor appealed to the people of the state to reject the APC candidates and vote for the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    The governor further asked the people to resist any form of intimidation and warned that election days were not designed for people to die.

    His words: “We have to be concerned about the safety of our voters first before anything else. It is the job of security agencies to guarantee the safety of voters. A country where lives and property are not protected is a failed state. That is a ‘shit hole’ country so nobody should blame President Donald Trump when he said, African countries are presiding over ‘shit hole’ countries.

    “In this country, we have had several instances where security men and women in uniform collude with criminal and terrorist in rigging elections and undermine the peace and stability of states like Bayelsa.

    “We now have partisan security officials who have become an armed wing of the ruling party. They are not interested in peace, law and order; their concern is more in political conquest than maintenance of law and order in this state.

    “They have undermined the security of this state in such a way that I have lost count of the number of Commissioner of Police redeployed  to the state within a space three months. This is the 10th CP they have sent.

    “I am a governor whose authority has been most undermined in the area of security management of this state. I have records where security officers in Abuja will be calling militants and cult leaders, and how they give cover to their nefarious activities under the pretext of carrying out surveillance contracts.

    “The new law is that if you are an APC members, you cannot be arrested when you kill. As an APC member, you can buy guns, get uniform, camp militia, kill and nothing happens.”

    When journalists visited the state secretariat of the APC to get reactions from the party since most names mentioned by Dickson are members of the party, the state Chairman, Jothan Amos, said he was too busy to speak on the matter.

     

  • Sylva’s Deputy campaign director slumps, dies in Bayelsa

    The Deputy Campaign Director of the Sylva-Igiri Campaign Organization during the 2016 governorship election was on Thursday reported dead.

    Chief Lionel Jonathan-Omo, former Commissioner for Enviroment was said to have slumped and fallen from a balcony in his country home in Ogbolomabiri area of Nembe, Nembe Local Government Area of the state.

    The sudden death of Omu, running mate to Chief Francis Doukpola during the 1999 governorship election on the platform of the All Peoples Party(APP), threw the Nembe communities and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) into mourning.

    It was gathered that the politician, who owned the biggest farm in Yenagoa, was rushed to the community hospital immediately but doctors advised his family to convey him to the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital in Rivers State (UPTH).

    He later died despite efforts by the doctors to stabilize his condition.

    Omo was also former lecturer at the River State University of Science and Technology (RSUST), writer and a frontline advocate that the country should return to commercial agriculture.

    The APC referred to the death of Omo as an “indescribable loss” of a wonderful ally at a time his experience and energy were most needed.

    The APC State Publicity Secretary, Mr. Doifie Buokoribo, in a statement on Thursday said Omo was a forthright politician, and an illustrious son of Bayelsa State and the Ijaw nation who partook in popular activities to better the lives of his people.

    Read Also: Sylva moves to stop illegal bunkering

    The statement said: “We do this tribute with great sadness over the indescribable loss of our leader, political mentor, and friend, Chief Lionel Jonathan-Omo.

    “Jonathan-Omo broke his limbs in a fall and fought bravely for his life at a private hospital in Port Harcourt to recover from the injuries he sustained. He never survived them. The chief died Thursday after an unsuccessful operation. All of us had hoped that Jonathan-Omo would recover from his injuries and get on with his life, particularly, at this time of intense political activities in our state and country when his experience and wisdom are seriously needed.

    “Lionel Jonthan-Omo who is from Nembe trained as a lawyer, and taught law at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology for several years. A former Commissioner in Bayelsa State, he was also a delegate representing the state at the 2005 National Political Reform Conference (NPRC).

    “Until his death, he was a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC). During the 2015-2016 Gubernatorial Elections, he was the Deputy Director-General of the Sylva/Igiri Campaign Organisation. He earned his living as founder of Achievers Farm in Igbogene-Yenagoa.

    “Jonathan-Omo was a wonderful party man, a great Bayelsan, and an illustrious Ijaw son. He was at the forefront of every popular activity – politically, economically, and socially – to better the lives of people in his state and nation. He believed in truth and fought for it with every resource and avenue at his disposal.

    “A democrat to the core, he always believed in dialogue and was always ready to listen to others. Lionel-Jonathan never judged or forced his opinion on anyone. He characteristically gave room for the ventilation of opinions, even from his fiercest opponents. His valuable and truthful counsels are some of the things we will surely miss.

    “Jonthan-Omo was focused and intelligent, a man of magically brilliant political ideas. The remarkable thing about his ideas is that they were always meant to help and better society. He was sacrificial, but strong and hated being vulnerable.  He was an incurable optimist and a huge encouragement to his political allies. He offered comfort and motivation to those around him.

    “Jonthan-Omo was sincere, loving, and simple. He was a wonderful father to his children and a great breadwinner who laid a solid foundation for not only his family but also his community and friends far and near.

    “Surely, his children and family will not lack people who will watch over them and ensure they continue to have a great life. Their father loved his people, lived with them, shared their pains and joys, and participated in activities to improve their political and economic wellbeing. He was a great man, brilliant and likeable”.