Former governor of Bayelsa state and the governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Congress in last weekend’s inconclusive governorship election, Timipre Sylva, may have been left in the cold, to fight his battle alone.
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This will be the second governorship election declared inconclusive by the INEC in under just a month following the same pattern during the Kogi elections few weeks earlier.
Besides, he insisted that the Resident Electoral Commissioner for the state had no right under the law to cancel an election which had been concluded, despite the security challenges that may have been associated with it.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, Mr Don Evarada said that “the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) rule says by 8am, materials have to be distributed, accreditation has to be done, voting has to commence and all of these, must happen between the hours of 8:00am-5:00pm”.
“All Bayelsans and, indeed, Nigerians are living witnesses to the unbridled desperation displayed by Dickson and PDP during the December 5th governorship election, which he knows he can not win”.
Asari stated that results collated and announced so far by INEC have shown that the incumbent governor and PDP’s candidate, Governor Seriake Dickson, had won 6 of the 7 local governments with a margin of 33,154 votes and has thus fulfilled constitutional requirement of 2/3 spread and popular votes.
“Reports of the election conducted on December 6, 2015 in Southern Ijaw LGA reveals that the election was substantially marred by violence, ballot box snatching, hostage taking of electoral officials including reports from political parties, observers – local and foreign – among others”.
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“A new date for the conduct of the election in Southern Ijaw LGA will be announced in due course”. Consequently, the Commission has decided in the interest of the integrity of the commission to cancel the election in Southern Ijaw.
