THE immediate past administration oiled so many Irrevocable Standing Payment Order, ISPOs, running into N50billion and still counting. Ironically, all the projects which the former governor claimed to have tied to the ISPOs are in a sorry state. Prominent among them is the Kokidiete Koki Specialist Hospital at Opolo and Melford Okilo Memorial Hospital, both in Yenagoa which were abandoned by Sylva.

Only recently, the state Chief Judge, Hon.  Justice Kate Abiri granted Governor Dickson’s prayer by stopping the state government from payment of N300million monthly from source to a beneficiary company. The money was allegedly paid to the company through a First Bank Account No: 4112040000417. In all, over N30 billion was allegedly paid to the firm between June 2007 and January 2012.

A cursory look at the Countryman-Governor’s three weeks in office shows clearly that the rubber has finally met the road. Governor Dickson in conjunction with the security apparatuses is already tracking down cultists and criminals.

He declared a state of emergency in the educational sector; education is now free in both primary and secondary schools. Each local government area is to have a new secondary school while the existing ones will be renovated with many modern primary schools springing up across the communities.

Each local government headquarters will have a modern general hospital stocked with drugs and equipped with state of the art facilities.  He promised massive critical infrastructure in the eight local government areas of the state part of which is the construction of the three senatorial zones’ roads to link all nooks and crannies of the coastal state.

The project was initiated by the government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan before he was elected Vice President but abandoned by the Sylva administration. Similarly, Governor Dickson envisages a Bayelsa that is a haven to tourists and investors.

In the days ahead, he will commence work on the Five–Star Hotel in Yenagoa abandoned his predecessor who claimed to have sourced money from the capital market to complete the hotel. Interestingly, the Countryman-Governor has removed all the bottle- necks that stifle investment in the state, including making land available to developers at no cost to erect mass housing across the state for the very poor.

To start on a clean slate, the Governor froze the state’s accounts and vowed to publish monthly, all accruals to the state beginning from this month.

So far, he has kept his words with his recent maiden World Press Conference tagged “Transparency Briefing” where he publicly declared the allocations to the state in the month of February and how the money is being spent. The briefing for this month holds in April.

The Governor’s style is not to turn Bayelsa to bazaar and den of racketeering but to motivate Bayelsans to work hard and eke a living legitimately.

While the people, on whose thighs sovereignty lies, hail the Governor for the populist policy and paradigm shift in governance, a few politicians complain that the Governor’s approach deprives them from looting public funds. Indeed the Governor’s action has crumbled the cookie and put an end to the frivolity and jamboree which had become the lot in Creek Haven.

But the Governor is not likely to waver; he is resolute on delivering on his campaign promises and sustain his fight against corruption, waste, crime and criminality. It is the same courage with which he weathered the storm in Bayelsa politics like the political general that he is that he is piloting the affairs of the state.

One thing about the Countryman-Governor is that he is used to taking difficult decisions once he believes in them, even if unpopular.

Mr. FRANCIS AGBO, a journalist, wrote from Yenogoa, Bayelsa State.