The governor of Bayelsa State, Hon. Seriake Dickson, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was yesterday elected for second term after he was declared the winner of the state governorship election with a total of 134,998 votes.
He defeated his closest rival, Chief Timipre Sylva of the All Progressive Congress (APC), who scored 86,852 votes.
The Chief Returning Officer who is the vice chancellor of the University of Calabar, Professor Zane Akpagu, declared that Governor Seriake Dickson of the PDP, having satisfied the requirement needed and scored highest number of votes is the winner of the election.
The outcome of the election, which was accepted by state agents of five political parties, was rejected by the APC state agent, Barr. Dennis Otiotio, who described the whole process as a sham.
Otiotio criticised the chief returning officer (CRO) of INEC, Professor Zane Akpagu, for deciding to shun the various objections and petitions against the alleged unlawful decision by the various local government returning officers to cancel elections in areas perceived to the under the control of the APC.
He said: “Everywhere APC won, the collation officer was looking for a flimsy excuse to cancel it. The process must be free, fair and the procedure must be seen to be so. We submitted petitions but the electoral officers refused to collate them.”
Otiotio, who also tried to draw the attention of the CRO to the perceived refusal of the Commission to take into account the total number of cancelled votes and the difference of the votes between Governor Seriake Dickson and Chief Timipre Sylva, was simply turned down with the announcement that the Final Result Sheet did not make provision for a column on cancelled votes.
Some APC supporters claimed that though the final result showed that Governor Dickson won with 134,998 votes as against 86,852 votes scored by Chief Timipre Sylva of the APC, the winning difference of 48,146 votes when matched against the total number of cancelled votes (53,959) called into question the validity of the poll.