New challenges: Bayelsa as opposition stronghold....

This morning, Lindsay Barrett reporting for Vanguard news wrote that the future of the PDP as an effective opposition party at the centre will be enhanced enormously if the party can remain a credible ruling force in states where it has held on to power including Bayelsa State.
The perception in some quarters is that former President Goodluck Jonathan was Bayelsa State’s first serious participant in national politics and that his defeat has placed the state at a disadvantage in the future of national policy-making. This is a totally wrong-headed view that must be resisted by the political leadership of the state. Nigeria's President Jonathan speaks during an interview with ThomsonReuters in New York  Former President, Goodluck Jonathan  Apart from key figures from the past in elective politics such as the late Melford Okilo, and in military politics like Alfred Diete-Spiff, or effective operatives like former Petroleum Minister and a key architect of the founding of the state Chief Dan Etete, one of the key figures in the defunct National Party of Nigeria, NPN, was the late technocrat Ranami Abah who was that party’s National Vice-Chairman when its government was overthrown by General Muhammadu Buhari’s coup in 1983.