Sharon IKECHUKWU
Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, has personally responded to a former Cross River State governor, Mr Donald Duke, over his comments on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, insisting that roads can be built in and across states with challenging terrains anywhere in the country.
Duke had expressed doubts over the possibility of getting the coastal highway project of the Bola Tinubu government to pass through Bayelsa, saying the state’s swampy land would make construction difficult and require about 100 to 200 bridges. He had also queried the project cost, vis-a vis its importance.
Duke had also spoken about Diri in derogatory terms, referring to the governor as “that fellow” he did not know, while also calling him a local champion.
Although the governor had responded to Duke through his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Daniel Alabrah, Diri took time to pillory Duke in a new response he made personally, calling Duke a pretender and a jester, who sat over the handover Bakassi, a part of his own territory, to Cameroun, when he was governor.
He said: “Donald Duke, I am not that fellow. I am the elected sitting governor of Bayelsa State. All of us from this region, particularly from Bayelsa State. Don’t accept that narrative that your state can’t be developed. We have very rich ancestry, our terrain is one of the best, if we develop it. And we are prepared to take our destiny into our hands and develop our territory.
“I like to seize the opportunity to thank Mr. President. Just the thought of it alone, that the coastal people should not continue to wallow in poverty and dehumanized. If we can have roads in the north or in other parts, then the coastal road is also doable. And of course the benefits of the coastal roads are too important and too enormous for any one of us to even go against.
“While constructing the East West Road, the coastal road must continue. Because you have brought into the heart of all the coastal states.
“So, we are having that conversation only for me to read, and then watch a video by a former governor of Cross River State that the coastal road was not doable. And the reason he gave was that Bayelsa even the state capital is a swamp. And that for that coastal road to pass through Bayelsa, you have to construct 100 to 200 bridges.”
Specifically, Diri told Duke that the coastal road was doable. Hear him: “And that that coastal road is doable if we as a state government, with our main resources, we are building bridges, we are building roads in the same swap that he says that cannot be done. And that we are inviting him to come to Bayelsa. I even want to find out when last did he come to Bayelsa, since he has given Bayelsa as an example.
“The former governor of Cross River State went back to Arise. And what I saw there was more of an insult to my person. He started by saying ‘that fellow.’
He added: “Donald Duke, hear me and hear me well, I am not that fellow. I am an elected sitting governor of Bayelsa State. I don’t even know that fellow. I don’t want you to know me from Adams. I don’t know you the same way you don’t know me.
“And I am very surprised that this is coming from a son of the Niger Delta, and more importantly a former governor who should refer the office of the governor at all times.
“He didn’t stop at that. He went on to say that since I don’t know him, he is a local champion. Yes, I am a local champion, because that is from where I was raised. I am elected to defend the local people. I am elected to champion their cause.
“Donald Duke, let me ask you. You were on sit when Bakassi was ceded out of Nigeria, you were the sitting governor of Cross River State because you were not a local champion. You did nothing about it.
“I believe that you are more of a jester and a pretender there is no councilor. There is no councilor in Cross River State from PRP in your own ward, and yet you pretend to be a presidential candidate so that at the end of the day, you will be rehabilitated.
“Donald Duke, i am not one who takes up people, i am not one of those who insults people, i don’t insult leaders, i don’t insult elders. But what you have done is not just about me, is about my environment, is about my people.
“And I will stand tall at all times to defend this environment and to defend the people of Bayelsa State.
