The agent of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the collation centre in Yenagoa, Mr Dennis Otiotio has condemned INEC’s announcement of Governor Seriake Dickson as winner of the Bayelsa election.
Speaking ton Sunday evening during Channels Television’s programme, Politics Today, Mr Otiotio described the decision to announce the results as a disregard for the electoral process.
He said, “The process started with an abuse of the process from the PDP to this point, even at this point, because provision 26 of the Electoral Act is very clear.
“It says that where the difference between the winner and runner up is less than total votes cancelled, the returning officer is not supposed to make a return.
“In this case, the total votes cancelled is about 53, 000 votes while the difference between PDP and APC is 48,146. In this circumstance, the returning officer is not supposed to declare any winner.
“We have about 10 National Commissioners and two Resident Commissioners here with him but he has gone ahead, in flagrant disregard to Section 26 of the Electoral Act, to declare the winner.
“We have made protest of several issues; the undue discretional powers exercised by the ad-hoc staff in cancelling the areas where APC won. Secondly, the process of delivering the materials, the hijacking, the widespread violence that took place in Ekeremo, especially the Ward 12 materials that were hijacked, in Southern Ijaw, several materials were hijacked, they never arrived at their destination, and results were filled and brought here.”
Mr Otiotio, who said that he had refused to append his signature on the result, further claimed that a rerun should have been ordered in places where election was cancelled.
“What the returning officer should have done was to order for a rerun in the areas that were cancelled because they cancelled a total of 53,000 votes while the difference between PDP and APC is 48,000.
“When they said people should come and sign (you saw me), I went up, I did not sign and I told them ‘tell the board what was the total number of votes cancelled so that everybody will know’ but they refused to announce the total number of votes cancelled.
“If you are following, you will see that local government by local government, they were announcing the number of votes cancelled and when you sum them up, you will get 53,000.
“The thing was a trap from the beginning, it was designed from the beginning to fail, to rig APC out, and it was designed from the beginning to make PDP win,” he said.
The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Seriake Dickson was on Sunday, January 10, 2016, declared winner of the Bayelsa State governorship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Mr Dickson polled 134,998 votes to emerge winner of the election while the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Timipre Sylva, scored 86,852 votes to place second.
