The All Progressives Congress (APC) Elders Council in Bayelsa State has claimed that Governor Douye Diri is trying to use the influence of the Vice-President, Kashim Shettima and Senator Adams Oshiomhole to secure his second term bid.
The group alleged that Diri is planning to invite high-ranking national leaders of the party to inaugurate some of his projects in the state.
The APC elders said they intercepted Diri’s programme of events listing Shettima and Oshiomhole as party leaders he had penciled down for invitation.
They described the projects as substandard and his move a desperate manipulative campaign strategy ahead of the November 11 governorship election.
The group claimed that Diri had already packaged billions of Bayelsa’s tax payers’ money as honorarium to lure the party leaders to Bayelsa to score some cheap political points.
Speaking via a statement signed by the secretary, Borchson Yengizifa, on Wednesday, the APC elders claimed that the governor wanted to create an impression that the APC leaders were sent by President Bola Tinubu to attend the event.
But they advised Diri to discard the manipulative strategy, adding that the leaders and Tinubu had not hidden their support for the governorship candidate andidate of the APC, 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 polls against Diri’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. So Diri’s fear for our party stems from the fact that he has become a veteran in the business of losing to APC.
“We will also notify the anti-graft agencies about the plans of spending billions of Bayelsa tax payers monies on so called logistics for VIP’s. How can logistics for commissioning be bigger than the projects to be commissioned?”
Yengizifa insisted that no APC leader would be deceived to attend the campaigns of the PDP designed and presented as project inauguration.