Observers Rate Bayelsa Governorship election low
By Amos Odhe.
Barely four hours after the Bayelsa state Governorship election results were released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and Governor Douye Diri of the People’s Democratic Party, announced winner having scored 175, 196 votes against his closest rival of the All progressives Congress, APC, Chief Timipere Sylva who polled 110,108 votes, some observers have come out with their observation expressing their displeasure and described what they saw after monitoring as unfortunate.
Addressing a press conference in Yenagoa, Jude Adeyemi of the Community of Youth for mobilization and Sensitization , who was flanked by Juliet Omale, said it was disheartening and unfortunate to express their displeasure having monitored the election from material distribution pre – election and election proper that the November 11 Governorship election in Bayelsa state was fraught with a lot of irregularities as Collation officers unilaterally cancelled elections , adding from what they observed over 100,000 votes were willfully cancelled and it is only a re – run election that would remedy the threat to democracy.
He said as far they were concerned BIVAs were by passed and that gave some parties the opportunity to connive with INEC to do the bidding of their master. “Of particular note from our monitoring collation of votes in Nembe, Brass and Southern Ijaw local government areas, we therefore called for a re – run or outright cancellation of the entire results purportedly declared by INEC”
They said INEC has a lot of questions to answer as what necessitated the Collation of results from Nembe, Brass and Southern Ijaw local government areas to be collated in INEC office in Yenagoa, that if they alleged that it was due to perceived criss in those areas, it is on record that every part of Bayelsa state was known as being volatile and insecure, adding that all these would have been put together before hurriedly declaring the results.
” INEC should be queried for these plethora of anomalies recorded during the election” they asserted .
