Timipre Sylva, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for governor of Bayelsa State, has urged state governor Douye Diri to give the residents of Nembe breathing room, claiming that the entire community has rejected all of the lies he told them on Thursday during the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign there.

Through his Special Assistant on Media and Public Affairs, Julius Bokoru, Sylva claimed that the governor visited Nembe to campaign for his elusive reelection but was unable to name any practical projects he had completed there aside from the Unity Bridge, which was almost finished when he took office.

Sylva, who is also from Nembe, pleaded with Diri to stop wasting his time worrying about Nembe, stating categorically that no amount of blackmail or desperation will enable him to win Nembe in the upcoming election.

In order to further the governor’s self-serving goal of winning the election, he claimed that Nembe had experienced dehumanisation, rights violations, neglect, and a theatre of war during Diri’s administration.

“Only last month, the SWAT team of the Inspector-General of Police cleared Nembe of dangerous criminals, aided and abetted, of course, by the present residents of Creek Haven, who transformed Opu-Nembe into a dystopian environment.

“Nembe cannot continue to be the stage for Governor Diri’s repeated lies and, even worse, the setting for his bloody antics and irrational political aspirations.”