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Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs, the scion of late Chief Olu Lulu-Briggs has been finally confirmed as the governorship flag bearer of the Accord Party (AP) when the national leadership handed him the party’s flag to fly as the governorship candidate of the party in the 2019 elections in Rivers State.

The flag was handed over to him by the party’s national chairman, Alhaji Mohammed Lawal Nalado during a World Press Conference held at L.A. King’s Hotel, Stadium Road, Port Harcourt, on Wednesday, January 23, 2019.

In handing over the flag to Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs, the Accord Party’s national chairman said he believed that the national leadership of the party had made a good choice.

While congratulating the people of Rivers State for accepting Lulu-Briggs as their governorship candidate, Alhaji Nalado said the Accord Party stands for peace and progress, hence the party’s interest in holistic development.

The Accord Party national chairman added: “Our party gives priority to human capital development. It is better to build human capital than to build infrastructure. When you build people, you build a nation. Crimes are increasing today because the people have been abandoned. Our governorship candidate has the capacity to restore Rivers State.

“We’re here today to hand over the flag of peace, victory, oneness and progress to Dumo Lulu-Briggs.”

Addressing the mammoth guests and supporters who came to witness the event, the Rivers State governorship candidate of the Accord Party, Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs, thanked the national leadership of the party for giving him and his running mate, Otua-Hart Nakwaasah the honour of flying the Accord Party’s flag.

He said that the right to live in dignity and be free from poverty, as well as the right to education, security, acquisition of wealth, among others, were the responsibilities of every responsible government which the administration Dumo Lulu-Briggs would be.

Stressing that a wind of change was blowing in all the nooks and crannies of Rivers State, the Accord Party governorship candidate declared that the state needed a new direction, given the things happening in Rivers State in the last twenty years.

“A wind of change is blowing across Rivers State, blowing away our tears. It is blowing through Ikwerre Land; the wind is blowing through Ogoni Land; it is whirling through the length and breadth of Kalabari Land, Andoni, Etche, Ogba, Ekpeye, Ndoni, Ndoki, Okrika, Engenni, Ibani, Bille, Abua and Odual Land. The strong wind of change is blowing from the mainland down to the creeks of Rivers State.

“As we approach the forthcoming polls, especially the governorship elections, on March 2, 2019, political activities are expected to get to the crescendo. Yet, keen observers of the happenings in Rivers State in the last 20 years, especially the past three years and eight months, will agree that the state needs a new direction. Rivers State requires a new deal that must start with fresh interrogation of the leadership question in the state.

“It is an irony of fate that a society as endowed with human and natural resources as well as with potentials for massive industrialization, as Rivers State, can have its people as marginalized and pauperized as we are,” Lulu-Briggs said.

Going down memory lane, the Accord Party governorship candidate recalled how the founding fathers of Rivers State worked with the first governor of old Rivers State, Alfred Diete-Spiff, to put the state on the part of progress and regretted that the vision of those founding fathers and their effort had been abandoned by present-day political leaders.

Enumerating his vision and mission for Rivers State, Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs promised to return the state to its former glory by putting it back on the track of socio-economic and political development as envisioned by her founding fathers.

Earlier, the state chairman of Accord Party, Dr Nnanna Onyekwere, promised that once in government, his party would return Rivers State to her lost glory.

Expressing regret that the state had been ruled by the same people in different garbs, Dr Onyekwere said that the leadership of Rivers State was overdue for change.

The Deputy Governorship candidate, Otua Hart Nakwassa, who gave the vote of thanks, enjoined Rivers people to embrace the change which he and Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs were bringing to Rivers state, even as he pledged that their administration would not only make Rivers state a better place for every man, woman and child, but also secure the future of the coming generations by putting policies on ground that would usher in a new and more progressive and caring Rivers state.

Highlight of the event was the presentation of flags to Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs and other candidates of the Accord party for various elective positions across the state, as well as the formal endorsement of Dumo Lulu-Briggs as the governor of Rivers State by the forum of disabled persons in Rivers State and representatives of all the students’ union governments in the state, who all came to publicly endorse Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs and affirm his candidature as the Accord party governorship candidate in Rivers State, calling on the people of the state to support him because of his numerous unmatchable humanitarian activities.