Immediate past Bayelsa State governor and current senator for Bayelsa West, Seriake Dickson, has told former governors to quit breathing down their successors’ necks.
Speaking in Abuja, Dickson said ex-governors who keep meddling in day-to-day affairs are the main reason many states can’t settle into steady governance. He also tore into the All Progressives Congress for ramming indirect primaries into the new Electoral Act, accusing the party of “shrinking every other party’s room to choose its own path.”
Excerpts from the interview:
You’ve been outspoken about the Electoral Act, especially on real-time result transmission. But other clauses matter too. Which ones got botched?
At the committee stage we agreed to keep all three ways of picking candidates: consensus, direct and indirect primaries. We even spelled out that consensus isn’t a back-room deal—every cleared aspirant has to sign a voluntary withdrawal. The House passed that version word-for-word.
Then the final draft dropped everything else and made indirect primaries the default. That’s APC’s preferred style, fine, but the law shouldn’t shove it on every party. Big or small, parties ought to pick the method that suits them.
