Dickson’s Mother for Burial December
The remains of Madam GoldCoast, mother of the Bayelsa State Governor, Mr. Seriake Dickson, who died of cancer in August, will be interred in December in Toru- Angiama, Delta State.
A statement signed yesterday by the governor on behalf of the Nanaye Dickson family of ToruOrua, Sagbama and the Enimieye Compound of Toru-Angiama, Delta State, said the funeral rites will begin with a service of songs on December 6 at the Ecumenical Centre, Yenagoa.
“With gratitude to the Almighty God for a life well spent, I, Henry Seriake Dickson, Governor of Bayelsa State, on behalf of the Nanaye Dickson family of Toru Orua, Bayelsa State and the Enimieye Compound of Toru Angiama, in Esinikrizi, quarters of Delta State, hereby announce the funeral rites of our late dear mother, Mrs. GoldCoast Dickson, who passed unto eternal glory in August 2018 at the age of 72,” the statement said.
“I appreciate the enormous and unprecedented out ouring of support and solidarity by way of calls, the numerous condolence visits, letters and others to the family.
“Now that the rains and the unfortunate flood are receding, the families and the communities hereby announce the funeral rites.
“Our families, the communities, the government the good people of Bayelsa State and I will be greatly honoured by your attendance at the funeral ceremonies as we pay our last respects to a truly golden mother.
“The public should please treat this announcement as a formal invitation to the burial,” the statement added. importation through what has become famed as the Rice Revolution.
Meanehile, the presidential candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has said the claim by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari that it has increased rice production in the country is false.
Atiku in a statement issued yesterday by his campaign organisation said the recently released data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) World Markets and Trade Report has proven the claims by Buhari and his government to be false.
President Buhari boasted about it when he told British Prime Minister, Theresa May, on April 16, 2018, that: “We have cut rice importation by about 90 per cent; made a lot of savings of foreign exchange and generated employment. People had rushed to the cities to get oil money, at the expense of farming. But luckily, they are now going back to the farms. Even professionals are going back to the land. We are making steady progress on the road to food security.”
Atiku noted that the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, on May 2, 2018, also made similar claim.
According to Ogbe, “Unemployment in Thailand was one of the lowest in the world, 1.2 per cent, it has gone up to four per cent because seven giant rice mills have shut down because Nigeria’s import has fallen by 95 per cent on rice alone.”
The former vice-president, however, noted that the “World Markets and Trade Report of the USDA, which is a public document disclosed that Nigeria imported three million metric tons of rice in 2018, which is 400,000 metric tons more than the quantity of the product imported in 2017.
“It does not end there. The report shows that there has actually been a steep drop in commercial rice production from its 2015 peak under the previous Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration.”
Quoting the report further, Atiku added that “Nigeria had consistently milled 3,780,000 metric tons annually-a drop from 3,941,000 metric tons recorded in 2015.”
Atiku, therefore, appealed to Buhari and his government to be truthful to the Nigerian public, rather than claiming progress they have not made, “because no matter how far and fast falsehood has travelled, it must eventually be overtaken by the truth.”