Investment Drive: Reviving Bayelsa Plastic Industry Not Our Priority, Says Government

The Bayelsa government has stated that reviving the once-thriving state-owned Plastics Company, which employed over 1,000 people, is not its top priority, and that it is instead focused on attracting private investors.

In an ironic move, Mr Ibiere Jones, Commissioner for Trade and Investment, dismissed the idea of reviving the industry, claiming that the policy would only be implemented if the Gov Douye Diri-led government were interested in attracting private investors.

While Diri has been on local and international trips in search of investors, his appointees are investing outside of the state.

For example, last week, Douye Diri opened the Trend Place Hotel in Lugbe, a suburb of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.

Brig Gen Eric Angaye (Rtd), the Bayelsa government’s Security Adviser and Coordinator, owns Trend’s Place Hotel and Suites.

The dilapidated state of the plastic factory, which the current administration inherited in working order during its first term in 2020, raises concerns about the government’s investment-driven policy.
He said, “It is your duty as a journalist to inform me of what is going on there. I will go there to check. It is not just that work that I am doing.

“As if I am only going to focus on Bayelsa Plastic. We are looking for investors, not all of them. Please, I am new; give me time to settle in.”

The factory, which was previously located in the Elebele area of the state, has been stripped of all machines, and the hall that once housed the machines has also been stripped of the corrugated iron sheets used for roofing.

A check last week by the Federated Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in Bayelsa State revealed that the hall originally hosting the factory was empty, with nothing on the ground to indicate that machines were once installed in the hall.

Also, the zinc sheets and irons used to build the hall were removed while the property was overgrown with weeds.

Recall that Timipre Sylva, the state’s former governor, founded Bayelsa Plastic Industry in 2010 to manufacture plastics, polytene bags, and other plastic materials.

It did, however, operate briefly during Henry Dickson’s tenure, with over 1000 employees. Despite some challenges, it remained operational until the current governor, Douye Diri, took over in 2020 and ceded control of the industry to a private firm, which effectively killed it.

This group of journalists had visited the factory about two years ago and found it in a sorry state, but they were surprised to see that despite all of their reporting and drawing the attention of the government to the factory’s sorry state, nothing was done until the entire machine was looted.