The Bayelsa State governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Timipre Sylva, has told the state Governor, Douye Diri, to allow the people of Nembe to breathe, saying the entire communities have rejected all the lies he told them on Thursday during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign in the area.

Sylva, speaking through his Special Assistant on Media and Public Affairs, Julius Bokoru, said the governor went to Nembe to campaign for his elusive reelection but could not point at any reasonable projects he executed in the area other than the Unity Bridge that was almost completed before he assumed office.

He said because the governor had no blueprint and had done almost nothing in the area, he and a former Deputy Governor, John Jonah resorted to attacking him with lies and attempted to blackmail him before his people.

Sylva, who also hails from Nembe, asked Diri to stop dissipating his energy on Nembe insisting that no amount of blackmail and desperation would make him win Nembe in the forthcoming poll.

Insisting that the people had rejected him, he said Diri’s obsession with Nembe had only brought death and destruction to the council.

Under Diri’s administration, Sylva said Nembe had been subjected to dehumanisation, rights abuses, and neglect and made a theatre of war in pursuit of the governor’s selfish interest of winning the election.

He said only last month the Inspector-General of Police’s SWAT team rid Nembe of dangerous criminals, sponsored and inspired, of course by the current occupants of Creek Haven, who turned Opu-Nembe to a dystopian setting.

He said Nembe could not remain the theatre of Governor Diri’s frequent lies and even worse, the playground of his violent games and extreme political ambitions.

Sylva said that Diri and the PDP had failed the people of Nembe and the entire state, adding that it was for the same reason they lost to the APC in the 2019 governorship election with more than 80% of the votes.

The statement said: “Sylva is a true Nembe son, loved, and appreciated by the people for his track record of human and industrial development.

“He is also the quintessential Nembe individual that carries peace, strength, love for brother, neighbours and innate drive for excellence and humanity.”