Four Political Parties Calls Cancellation Of Bayelsa Governorship Election Results
They also noted that the electoral authority had broken the law by announcing a victor when the margin of victory was smaller than the number of invalid ballots.
Allen Domotimi, chairman of the SDP in the state, claimed that his party was not happy with the results that were announced and the consequent announcement of Diri as the winner. He claimed that the PDP paid as much as N50,000 in some parts of the state for vote buying.
He claimed, “We noticed that INEC cancelled the areas where other parties won and announced the areas where PDP got higher votes, like in Nembe Local government area.”
About 26,000 ballots were thrown out in the Nembe local government district. The same may be said for Yenagoa’s municipal government. In fact, anytime they learned that rival parties were receiving more votes, they would annul such results and instead announce PDP victories.
Since they invalidated so many ballots, they must schedule a new election.
In light of this, the party rejects the stated result and will vigorously contest it before the Tribunal.
New Nigeria People’s Party Bayelsa State Chairman Joel Nathan added, “It was as if the big one was allocating votes to some of the parties they felt are minor parties and I made it clear that my party is not a minor party but a big party Nigeria and I sit here today to state that we are not comfortable with the results that was declared by INEC.”
We are not satisfied with the results that have been announced at this time, so we are rejecting them outright. The votes cast in this election should be distributed fairly. Our votes should be counted even if they don’t help us win. We will not accept the official INEC results until that is completed.
A group of nonpartisan observers raised concerns with INEC about the voting process and demanded that the results be nullified.
Jude Adeyemi, speaking on behalf of the other observers, stated, “We are registering our displeasure because the election was marred with irregularities.” As a result, we are advocating for a reversal of the findings.
