The Bayelsa APC Elders Council has uncovered a plot by the Bayelsa State Governor, Douye Diri, to bring some high-ranking national leaders of the APC to inaugurate some of his substandard projects as part of his desperate manipulative campaign strategy ahead of the November 11 election.
The APC elders said they intercepted Diri”s programme of events listing the Vice-President, Kashim Shettima and Senator Adams Oshiomhole as leaders he was penciling down for invitation.
The elders in a statement signed by their Secretary, Elder Borchson Yengizifa, said their intelligence revealed that Diri was packaging billions of Bayelsa’s tax payers’ money as honorarium to lure the APC leaders to Bayelsa to score some cheap political points a few days to the election.
Yengizifa in a statement on Wednesday said the governor wanted to create an impression that the APC leaders were sent by President Bola Tinubu to attend the event.
But he told Diri to bury the manipulative strategy adding that the leaders and President Tinubu had not hidden their support for the Governorship Candidate of the APC, Chief Timipre Sylva.
He said: “This ill-conceived idea is to create an impression that these APC leaders were sent by our very dear President, H.E Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which isn’t true.
“President Tinubu hasn’t hidden his support for our candidate Chief Timipre Sylva and the APC in Bayelsa State. Recently at the Villa, President Tinubu lifted up Sylva’s hands and endorsed him for Governor in front of cameras. So this manipulative move by Diri to bribe some APC leaders will fail.
“In his nearly four years as governor he commissioned nothing. And now, very few weeks to the guber election he is inviting our party leaders, promising them huge sums of money to come and commission projects.
“We are certain none of our leaders especially the Vice-President will fall for this ruse and accept Diri’s Greek Gifts. Diri is a living witness of the widespread support the APC enjoys from our people so he is trying to reap where he did not sow.
“We beat him by more than half of the votes in 2019, we also trounced his candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in that year’s Presidential election and did a repeat performance in 2023 when our dear President Sen. Bola Tinubu and his amiable vice-president, Kashim Shettima, emerged victorious at the poll against Diri’s PDP and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. So Diri’s fear for our party stems from the fact he has become a veteran in the business of losing to APC”.
Yengizifa insisted that no APC leader would be deceived to attend the campaigns of the Peoples Democratic Party (APC) designed and presented as project inauguration.
He said: “We wish to state that no APC leader will grace the PDP campaigns, which they masquerade as commissioning of non-existing projects.
“We will also notify the anti-graft agencies about the plans of spending billions of Bayelsa tax payers monies on so called logistics for VIPs. How can logistics for commissioning be bigger than the projects to be commissioned?
“The election in Bayelsa State has been won and lost already. Diri’s failures speak for itself and his inevitable loss at the poll is his own doing. He had four years to endear himself to Bayelsans and yet he blew it. His abysmal records have decided his fate”.