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| His Excellency Hon.Henry Seriake Dickson The Governor of Bayelsa State |
A brief account of leadership of the State from the genesis of statehood of Bayelsa to date has to begin with the first Military Administrator, Navy Captain Philip Ayeni, Navy Captain Omoniyi Caleb Olubolade and Lt. Col. Paul Edor Obi who midwifed the first democratic government led by His Excellency, Chief D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha as the first indigenous governor of Bayelsa state. Governor Alamieyeseigha was succeeded by Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan who was his deputy before becoming the 2nd indigenous governor of the state, Chief Timipre Sylva was the 3rd and now we have the incumbent, Hon. Henry Seriake Dickson as the 4th indigenous governor of Bayelsa state.
Dickson was sworn in alongside his deputy, REar Admiral Gboribiogha John Jonah [Rtd] at the Isaac Boro Peace Park on the 14th of February, 2012 that was Valentine's Day. After taking the Oath of Office and of Allegiance, the Governor delivered his maiden address to the people of the state, where he graphically announced the mission of his administration that had to do with Reformation and Restoration in these words:
"We shall undertake fundamental reforms to emphasize transparency, accountability, due-process and value re-orientation by all institutions and functionaries of government...there shall be zero tolerance for corruption under my administration.."
The governor emphasized this point by saying:
"The days of enrichment without labor and funding of the greedy and avarice of a few at the expense of the development of our people is over, I will plug all leakages and sources of corruption which have been the bane of our development."
And to achieve this cardinal objective and policies of anti-corruption, probity and accountability, the Governor Dickson an agenda for Reformation and Restoration. To this end he began a monthly transparency briefings whereby the monthly incomes and expenditures were announced to the public.
The early stages of governance was smooth, but when the Governor, Hon. Henry Dickson took his anti-corruption crusade to the door steps of the the "Alibabas" [thieves or official rats\ in the Civil Service, then he knew that the battle line was drawn between his government and the 'brigands' in office. Unperturbed, the governor vowed to bring the culprits to book with a view to sanitizing the system and to bring the state back to the fast lane of development, for which purpose he constituted various verification committees.
The Dickson government had not helped matters looking at the claims of 'robust' achievements made by the Restoration government in the 'War Against Corruption' in the Civil Service Reforms, that had given hope to the people of the state going by their claims of realizing a whopping billions of Naira from incessant verification exercises, without having the ability to take care of just a month's salaries of workers in the Month of June, lamented by aggrieved workers of the State Government.
The weeping Civil servants, who spoke to Golden Pen behind camera said they wee afraid of a sledge hammer of sack, said: "...we expected a self reliant government that could take care of at least one month salaries bill at the end of the month, after all the monthly hundreds of millions of Naira to billions of Naira from the gains of ghost workers removal from vouchers, sack of those due retirement and sack of unqualified workers etc, all that money so gathered should have been more than enough to pay our salaries.."
