A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirant in Bayelsa, Amb Godknows Igali, has pledged to prioritise human capacity building if elected.

Igali and 20 others are jostling for the PDP ticket in the party’s primaries slated for September 3 ahead the November 16 general election for the governorship seat in the state.

Speaking at a news conference to unveil his manifesto at his campaign office in Yenagoa on Monday, Igali, a career diplomat, said that he would adopt a novel funding approach to drive the development of the state.

According to him, rather than deploy public funds on infrastructure, he would use equity funds from investors to build infrastructure and use public funds for social investment to develop the capacity of the people.

He said that he would leverage on his exposure as an Ambassador to attract development aid and foreign direct investment and deploy models used by other countries with similar challenges as Nigeria to develop Bayelsa.

Igali said that if elected governor of Bayelsa, he would ensure that primary and secondary school students were fed twice at state government expense as there was a connection between nutrition and learning.

He promised to sustain the free and compulsory primary and secondary education and subsidise tertiary education by payment of bursary to undergraduates.

“I come to the race prepared with a new approach and new strategy to serve the people of Bayelsa to improve their lots. I have the requisite expertise and international exposure to attract foreign capital to develop Bayelsa.

“When that happens, we save on the funds that hitherto went into infrastructure and then deploy it to social services to make life more meaningful to the people of Bayelsa,” he said.

Chief Nengi James, a representative of Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) in Bayelsa, noted that the approach of aspirants disclosing their plans to the people was in line with the position of the civil society group.

The TMG believes that aspirants should have their individual manifestoes rather than adopting the party manifesto, we have seen that approach fail over the years in our democratic space.

“We feel strongly that every aspirant should articulate his plans in a documented form for the electorate to use to assess them and we urge all aspirants across the political divide to do the same,” James said.

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