BAYELSA STATE

SERIAKE DICKSON: IMPROVED HEALTHCARE, CHALLENGING SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

Continuing from where he left off after his first term, Seriake Dickson in the last 17 months has expended resources in repositioning education in Bayelsa State. With his policy on free and compulsory education at the primary and secondary school levels, the governor has devoted resources building model schools across the state. Bayelsa under his watch continues to pick the bills for students registering for WAEC, NECO, and JAMB examinations, and has provided scholarships to enable Bayelsans and other Ijaw-speaking peoples study for graduate and post-graduate degrees in universities in Nigeria and overseas.

Dickson has also tackled teacher education, which had been neglected for many years due to inconsistent government policies.

In the same vein, the governor has focused on infrastructure projects such as roads in the state capital, Yenagoa, to ease the gridlock in the city, while roads to open up communities outside the capital have also received attention. Water transportation for communities in the creeks has equally been upgraded to reduce accidents in the state’s waterways.

Dickson, however, has struggled to pay the salaries of his workers and pensioners, while the menace of militancy, kidnappings and cultism have risen appreciably in the last one year in the state. The governor is now trying to tackle the crime wave in his state through skills empowerment programmes and has embraced the federal government’s modular refinery projects for the Niger Delta to create jobs for his people.

Of the four major oil producing states in the country, Bayelsa continues to remain the laggard in all spheres of development, and this has been evident in the state’s IGR, which dropped to N7.9 billion in 2016. The state’s FAAC allocations also dropped significantly in 2016 due to a combination of low oil prices and militant attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, while its debt to foreign and local creditors grew.