By ISMAILA CHAFE

President Muhammadu Buhari has pledged that he will address three major requests tabled by Gov. Duoye Diri of Bayelsa, with “promptness and immediacy.”

Malam Garba Shehu, the president’s spokesman, in a statement in Abuja, said the president made the pledge while responding to an address by the governor during his visit to the State House, Abuja, on Wednesday.

Buhari stressed the need for immediate response to the governor, saying, “Given the period we are in, I know most of you are in the field campaigning. I will respond to your requests as quickly as possible.”

Diri, who was accompanied on the visit by his immediate predecessor, Sen. Seriake Dickson, King Alfred Diete-Spiff and the Chairman of the State’s Council of Traditional Rulers, King Bubaraye Dakolo, asked for three important things from the president.

He said he wanted the Federal Government to take over the Bayelsa Medical University, now that government was setting up hospitals in the Geopolitical Zones;

The governor also demanded for the speedy completion of three federal roads in each of the Senatorial Districts; and the restoration of the Oil Mining Licence, “OML 46” to Bayelsa, which he said was unjustly revoked and awarded to a private company.

According to the governor, the issue of OML 46 is “emotional” to Bayelsans, whom he said, possessed the technical and financial capacity to manage the oil well.

Diri congratulated the president on the nation’s attainment of 62nd Anniversary which he said coincided with Bayelsa’s 30th year of creation.

He urged the president to continue with his balanced approach to issues of national development.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the president also met behind closed doors with former President Goodluck Jonathan, immediately after his engagement with Diri.

NAN reports that the agenda of the meeting between the president and Jonathan, also an indigene of Bayelsa, was unknown to newsmen as at the time of filing this report. (NAN)

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