APC: Our Guber Candidate not a Terrorist

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bayelsa has refuted allegations that its candidate for the November 16 governorship election was being sponsored by an oil company to terrorise the people and forcibly take over the state.

A leader of the party in the state and member, House of Representatives, Mr. Israel Sunny-Goli, who spoke in reaction to Governor Seriake Dickson’s comment that the APC candidate, David Lyon, was an alleged gangster being sponsored by the said multinational, said there was no truth in the insinuation.

Dickson had been quoted as saying that the oil company was giving surveillance contracts to young boys he described as outlaws, including the candidate of the party, Lyon.

“I have said it several times that they are working towards having a mafia-like hold in our communities. These boys are like a parallel government. Somebody has close to a billion naira every month and the only thing he does is to look for criminally-minded people to engage and just pay them money and use them to maim and kill anybody he disagrees with,” he had alleged.

But Sunny-Goli, while defending the party’s candidate said that if APC loyalists who are working with the company were described as terrorists, then it was unfair for the governor to exclude members of his own party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that are also contractors to the oil company.

“The company does not have a hand in our growing popularity in Bayelsa. It does not have anything to do with our general acceptability. How can a governor come out to say our governorship candidate is a terrorist because he was a contractor or because he was given a contract by the company.

“That company has no business with politics, everyone knows that. Their job is to extract crude oil and get their percentage from the federal government. They have been doing business for over three decades and the laws are clear, the regulators are there.