National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole has declared that the party’s candidate, David Lyon, will emerge victorious in the November 16 Bayelsa State gubernatorial election.
Speaking during the Bayelsa APC stakeholders and aggrieved governorship aspirants meeting at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja, Oshiomhole accused Governor Seriake Dickson of harassing APC supporters in the state.
Oshiomhole assured that such threat would not deter the electorates in Bayelsa state to cast their votes for Lyon, adding: “I think Dickson has allowed his fears, lack of self-confidence, his imminent defeat and that of his party to becloud his judgement, as to resort to inelegant language and uncouth statements to describe a fellow citizen of Bayelsa.
“When a governor describes one of his own on account of political differences, using terrorists and other such words, then he has already missed it.
“And I can understand his fears, if people who go to borrow labels and assume that they are the leaders of the Ijaw and that they are the lions, when they see the real and authentic lion, they are sure to be afraid.”
He noted that the APC rejects and condemn in strong terms the raw language unbecoming of a governor, adding that he admired Dickson a lot, but that the way he has to describe Lyon was very disappointing
“We will not descend to his level, but on this occasion, we will invoke a popular statement made by Michelle Obama at the peak of the last presidential election in US when she said, “When they go low, we fly high.”
“So, when Dickson goes low, we will fly high. We will not join him in using gutter language to describe his office, his person, or even their candidate who is about to be defeated.
“We recognise that he has a right to be selected by his party, we believe our candidate is better than his candidate and we believe he will provide better, popular, people-oriented governance, not elitist governance for Bayelsa State.
He argued that around the world, not many professors have been presidents in America or ruled Britain, France and Israel or any of the democracies, noting that it was the extent to which leaders could connect to the ordinary people.
“You share their visions and pains, you grew from the community and have been an ordinary person as they. Therefore, they don’t need to tell you what their problems are, because you have lived through those problems with them and I think those are the qualities of our candidate, which has brought into Dickson,” he said.