By Chuks Iloegbunam
Yesterday in Abuja, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso joined the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC). The duo’s shrewd move is a clean break from the entangling and suffocating shrouds of previous political intrigues, back-stabbings, serial opportunism, and consolidated national shame.
The NDC promises to pull Nigeria back from a precipice guaranteed to plunge it into an unfathomable abyss. The man principally responsible for this rejuvenating gambit is none other than Senator Henry Seriake Dickson (CON), a focused, unassuming achiever whose patriotic and purposeful life deserves to be introduced to those who, as yet, are unaware of the phenomenon he represents.
Born on January 28, 1966, Senator Dickson earned LL.B and Barrister-at-Law degrees while an officer of the Nigeria Police. After a decade in the Force, he voluntarily resigned to practice law in 1994. Four years later, he joined politics. In 2006, he was appointed the Bayelsa State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice. A year later, he became a member of the House of Representatives until 2012 when he contested for and won election as Governor of Bayelsa State. His second tenure ended in February 2020. On December 5, 2020, Dickson won the Bayelsa West Senatorial Bye-Election with over 80 percent of the total votes and was sworn in as Senator into the 9th Senate, replacing Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo.
Everyone acknowledges that winning elections is great. But far greater is the outcome of a politician’s service to those who trusted him with their votes. In this connection, Dickson’s record speaks for itself. These are some of the feats that marked the exceptionalism of his two-term gubernatorial stint: He enacted the Bayelsa Right to Education Law, which obliges parents and guardians, as well as the Government, to ensure that children are in school up to the age of 18. He made primary and secondary school education free and compulsory.
He built 13 model boarding schools in a state where none previously existed and introduced compulsory boarding education. He built the flagship Ijaw National Academy, with more than 1,500 students on full scholarship. His massive investment in education paid off when Bayelsa leapt from the bottom of the nation’s secondary schools’ rankings to the top five leading states in the country.
Governor Dickson’s administration established the University of Africa, in Toru-Orua, the Bayelsa Medical University, the Bayelsa State Polytechnic, Aleibiri, and other non-degree awarding tertiary institutions, including the Bayelsa School of Agriculture, the Bayelsa State Sports Academy, Asoama, and the Bayelsa International Institute of Catering and Hospitality, Yenagoa. Despite these institutions, Dickson, as Senator, built his state’s first private university, the Hensard University in 2023.
In the Health sector, Dickson built the Bayelsa Diagnostics Centre, the Bayelsa State Forensics Centre, and the Bayelsa Drug Mart to tackle incidents of fake drugs. He built and fully equipped the 100-bed Bayelsa Specialist Hospital, and built 80-bed hospitals in each of the Ekeremor, Kaiama, Sagbama, and Southern Ijaw local government areas.
On the economy, the signpost of Senator Dickson’s astonishing performance is that internally-generated revenue spiralled from a miserable ₦50 million per month at the inception of his governorship to an incredible monthly receipt of ₦1.2 billion by the time he completed his second tenure.
Apart from the modern, interconnecting roads he constructed in the state, the Bayelsa Airport was one of his big projects. Remarkably, all these projects were executed during a recession that lasted through six years of his eight years as Governor. But, as was to be expected, the jealous fabricated frivolous petitions and regurgitated them to the EFCC, which forensically investigated the man and found him to be antiseptically clean. The ICPC never even bothered to invite him for a “chat,” let alone sue him for corruption or treasury wrecking. Surprising as it is for these climes, this man, who has consistently acquitted himself creditably in public service, is not loud.
His sense of humility and decorum is infectious. Renting a house in Abuja upon his election into the House of Representatives in 2007, he lived there until December 2025 when he completing hiw own house and moved into it – nearly six years after his governorship! I got to meet this great but modest man by happenstance. During 2024, I was in Abuja for a public reading of my biography of General Aguiyi-Ironsi. Only after the event did he get to know about it. He told Ikeddy Isiguzo, my friend and journalistic colleague, that he would have loved to attend it. On expressing the desire to own a copy of the book, Ikeddy told him it was easy to fix, as I was still in town. Dickson then invited me over for a breakfast meeting.
At around six feet (1.8288 metres), I always considered myself a tall man. But when I encountered Dickson, I felt dwarfed. He is towering, a gentle giant. Our breakfast meeting registered a full house. We discussed extensively. He left me in no doubt of his erudition and his broad global perspective. Rising to go, Senator Dickson asked if there was someone to mark our meeting with the stamp of photographic record. There was.
Seriake Dickson had the perspicacity to read the trajectory of Nigerian politics and, years ago, started working assiduously toward the formation and registration of the Nigerian Democratic Congress. Nigeria now has a fait accompli of two national-level politicians untainted by corruption, who achieved much as state governors, the one now providing the platform on which the other will strive for a mandate for the salvage operation that Nigeria sorely and urgently needs.
