A political stakeholder in the Sagbama local government area of Bayelsa, Richard Kpodoh, says Governor Douye Diri risks losing his second-term bid if he continues to toy with the zoning arrangement of the Bayelsa-West senatorial district.

“Governor Diri should understand that his plan to undermine the Ekeremor people is the beginning of the war against his second tenure election. Let Diri and Dickson tell us what he (Dickson) attracted to the area when he was a member of the House of Representatives and in his current tenure in the Senate,” said Mr Kpodoh.

The Bayelsa-West Senatorial District is made up of Sagbama and Ekeremor LGAs.

Mr Kpodoh, a former security adviser to the Bayelsa government, called on the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Bayelsa to respect the zoning arrangement or risk a protest vote by the electorate.

He mentioned that people in the area would continue to fight against “the greedy interest of some politicians to scuttle the brotherly rotational zoning of National Assembly positions between the two LGAs.”

Speaking with journalists on Monday in Yenagoa, Mr Kpodoh berated Mr Diri for recently lobbying people from the area to work for the re-election of ex-governor and serving senator Seriake Dickson.

He further pointed out that “Diri is only maternally an Ekeremor man.”

“Let him go and decide for the Kolokuma/Opokuma people if they would allow him to break their age-long zoning arrangements”, Mr Kpodoh said.

Mr Kpodoh said going by the zoning arrangement, it was the turn of the Ekeremor people to produce the next senator.

He warned that the Sagbama/Ekeremor people would join the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) to reverse the political pendulum if Messrs Diri, Dickson and the PDP failed to honour the zoning arrangement.

(NAN)