Today, governor Seriake Dickson declared open in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, the 11th edition of All Nigerian Editors Conference (ANEC), organised by the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) with the theme: “Nigeria the Change we Need: Role of the Editor.”

In his words: “I enjoin you to rise up as we fashion out a new national value that will bring a new Nigeria which has already started. Since I became governor, we have delivered change, even the change mantra started in Bayelsa State. I’m the original change governor. The change started from Bayelsa when we stopped young people from being killed on the streets of Yenagoa. On the day that I declared interest to run for governor, five innocent youths were shot dead just to scare me.”

The Governor told the audience that he wants Bayelsa to be the new Dubai of Africa. He challenged them to look at the quality of roads in the state. He boasted: “Somebody was here for five years, killings increased. Apart from the economy and security, we must also build national consensus in education. We’ve invested N23 billion in building educational infrastructure in the last three years. We have done some changes in the education sector.”

Dickson also spoke against the way battle against insurgency is subjected into politics. He argued: “With this new government, we have realised that terrorism is something we should all unite to fight. We must observe the law and order on national security. We should not be pointing accusing fingers at the man in the presidency as being responsible for terrorism. That is a very wrong approach, we are at war, but change is needed in the war against terrorism and corruption, we shouldn’t politicise and ethnicize the war against corruption. These are the essential components of all the change that we need. That is what we want the government to look into. My position has always been that after elections, everybody should unite to move the country forward because hunger and terrorism do not know state, ethnicity or religion. We should all collaborate with Buhari on the issue of national security on law and order and deliver on the economy for us to make Nigeria”, he stressed.