At some minutes after 2am on Sunday
(today) the collation exercise of the rerun governorship election in
Bayelsa State was abruptly adjourned to reconvene at 11am.
This was after the results of the poll
in four of the local governments were announced. The Independent
National Electoral Commission Returning Officer, Mr. Zana Akpagu,
adjourned the exercise which was taking place at the Yenagoa Local
Government Area Headquarters.
In the declared results, the All
Progressives Congress scored 448 votes in Yenagoa LGA while the Peoples
Democratic Party polled 839. In Brass LGA, APC had 1,679 and the PDP got
5. In Sagbama LGA, APC scored 119 , PDP, 180 while APC had 139 in Ogbia
LGA with PDP polling 1,290 votes.
During the announcement, there was mild
drama when the PDP agent at Brass LGA, Fred Agbedi, protested against
the result calling for its cancellation.
The APC agent, Dennis Otitio, who was
evidently agitated stood up and started talking to the audience without
permission from Akpagu.
Akpagu was displeased with the APC agent and threatened to send him out of the hall.
As of 9.45pm on Saturday, it was noticed
that results were being brought by returning officers to the state
headquarters of the commission.
Meanwhile, no fewer than 12 persons
suspected to be militants and security agents were feared killed during
the rescheduled election in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area and
other polling units across the state.
It was learnt that the 12 included four
policemen, two soldiers and six civilians alleged to be militants from
the neighbouring Delta State.
It was further learnt that the deaths stemmed from shootings in some LGAs in the state, including Nembe and Ekeremor.
Shootings were said to have started in some parts of the state in the early morning of Saturday, the day of the rerun.
A resident of Ekeremor, who spoke to our
correspondent on condition of anonymity, said some militants attacked
Ekeremor, the hometown of the Minister of State for Agriculture and
Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, twice.
The source said the first attack, which
was carried out by some militants suspected to be from Delta State was
around 1am, while the second attack took place around 3am.
Investigations showed that the attacks,
which were aimed at making it impossible for election to be held in the
polling units with 13,000 voters’, were repelled by security agents.
Also, as a result of sporadic shootings
in Southern Ijaw, two persons were said to have received gunshot wounds
in Agoibiri area.
An unconfirmed number of casualties was recorded after the shootings.
The corpses of the dead bodies,
numbering seven, were said to have been deposited in Oboro community in
Bomadi area of Delta State.
When contacted, the Police Public
Relations Officer, Bayelsa State Command, Mr. Asinim Butswat, said he
had yet to be briefed on the incidents.
He, however, promised to confirm the
incident, saying he only heard that some hoodlums snatched electoral
materials in Ogbia and that the police had intensified efforts to
recover them.
As of the time of going to press, the
spokesman had yet to respond to the death claims as well as the effort
by the police on the snatched materials.
Some members of Governor Seriake
Dickson’s campaign team, the Restoration Campaign Organisation,
confirmed that there were shootings and killings in Ekeremor on
Saturday.
They claimed that because of the development, election could not be held in nine units in Ekeremor.
They further claimed that in the
Amassoma area of Southern Ijaw, elections were only held in some units,
while others could not get election materials because of widespread
violence.
In Brass, they claimed that election materials did not get to some units, including Akassa area.
The Dickson loyalists also alleged that
there were heavy shootings and attacks of the Peoples Democratic Party
members in Bassambiri area of Nembe.
According to them, a prominent ex-militant leader and his supporters also hijacked election materials in Peremabiri
They also alleged that in Ward 4 of
Southern Ijaw, election materials for units 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29
were hijacked by political thugs.
The campaign spokesman for Dickson, Mr.
Jonathan Obuebite, alleged that from what transpired during the
supplementary election, the security agencies had failed the people of
Bayelsa.
He said widespread violence occurred
across the LGAs that participated in the exercise despite the assurances
from President Muhammadu Buhari that security agencies would live up to
the expectations of the people.
He said with what happened in the
rescheduled poll, Dickson had been vindicated that the security agencies
were not ready to provide the enabling environment for all the
political parties to operate.
Speaking on the supplementary poll, the
campaign team of the APC candidate, Mr. Timipre Sylva, dismissed the
claim that the Presidency had any hand in the poll.
The spokesman, Sylva-Igiri Campaign
Organisation, Mr. Nathan Egba, said, “Our attention has been drawn to a
sponsored media report that the Presidency has issued a directive to the
Independent National Electoral Commission to declare Sylva winner of
the election.
“The Sylva-Igiri Campaign Organisation
wishes to sound it clear once again that President Muhammadu Buhari is
not influencing the result of the election in favour of our candidate,
having remained neutral from the beginning of the process.
“The report linking the Presidency to
the Bayelsa election was misplaced and mischievous. The APC was shocked
at such claims coming from the PDP at a time election was ongoing in the
various polling units in the entire Southern Ijaw LGA and some units in
six other local government areas of the state.”
Egba said the statement from the
opposition giving victory to the APC in the poll is an admittance of
imminent defeat on their part as they must have sensed from the reports
coming from the field.
He advised Dickson to learn from the
experience of the last presidential election and stop his “brand of
propaganda that had not taken him far since the election process began
months back.”
The PDP, however, praised the people of
Southern Ijaw and others in the remaining 101 units where the rerun took
place for their steadfastness in the face of intimidation.
The Director of Publicity, Restoration
Campaign Organisation, Jonathan Obuebite, in a statement, expressed joy
that the PDP was cruising to victory in the rerun.
Obuebite said, “I want to appreciate the
people of Southern Ijaw Local Government Area and those in the other
101 polling units, as they listened to our call that they must not allow
anybody to intimidate them as they step out to exercise their civic
responsibilities.”
The rerun in Southern Ijaw and over 100 polling units across six LGAs in the state was not without some hiccups.
There were reported shootings, ballot boxes snatching and hijack of election materials, as well as late accreditation.
In Amassoma in Southern Ijaw, Ward 10, units 21 to 26, materials were not available as of 11.30am.
Heavy shootings also frustrated movement of materials from Amatoru Community Secondary School to units in the ward.
In Tara Kiwi community in Amassoma, the
hometown of late former Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the turnout of
voters was high and accreditation was going on as of 11.50am.
In Amatolo community, still in Southern
Ijaw, there were sporadic shootings and the development prevented INEC
from moving election materials to the area as of 12 noon.
In Ward 1, Agoibiri in Southern Ijaw, there was sporadic shooting and two persons were reportedly wounded by stray bullets.
The development was said to have angered some of the youths in the area, who destroyed election materials.
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