Timipre Sylva, the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate in Saturday’s off-cycle governorship election in Bayelsa State, decried the non-uploading of voter registrations from three units of his ward in Okpoama, Brass LGA of the state.
Sylva revealed this while taking questions from media shortly after voting in his polling unit 4, ward 4, naming the impacted units as 3, 5, and 9, blaming INEC for the error, which he termed “a careless mistake.”
He stated that his group had reported the issue to INEC’s national leadership, and the commission pledged to rectify it and extend voting hours in the affected polling locations.
Sylva, on the other hand, praised the electoral umpire for improving polling station operations but added that there was still space for improvement.
“I’m very confident that things are going to go well for the APC at the end of the day, definitely. But we have some issues in the ward; Unit 3, Unit 5, and Unit 9 had issues. I think the registers were not uploaded. So we escalated it to INEC, and they accepted that it was a careless mistake on their part”
“I don’t know why units in my ward were not uploaded. But I think the problem is being rectified, and they’ve promised that in those particular units, they will extend the voting time because a lot of people would have been disenfranchised if that was not rectified. But we’ve been able to escalate it to Abuja.” Sylva Stated
Sylva also alleged violence and ballot snatching by supporters of the PDP in parts of the state, with some army personnel reportedly aiding and abetting the incident.
Sylva further said, “But so far in my unit, things are going on very well, but around the state, we also are following; there is a lot of violence. I mean, the PDP is doing quite a bit there, trying to molest our voters with security. In fact, in some cases, it is believed by our people that we are running for election, not against PDP but against security. But we are containing the situation, and I’m sure that at the end of the day, we will come out victorious.
“I have been told that in Yenagoa, there has been a lot of violence. In fact, this morning, I woke up with a story of one of my APC members being shot. By afternoon, we had situations where the army, especially in Bayelsa State, had taken over some areas. In fact, in Biseni (Yenagoa LGA), I have just spoken to them. They said it’s the army that is out there with the PDP to snatch ballot boxes.
“I don’t know the extent of what is going on, but frankly speaking, the security in Bayelsa must be called to order. They are really on the side of the PDP, unfortunately, especially the army, and we are expecting that at the end of the day, our people will be able to contain them.
“For INEC, I will say there has been a lot of improvement, I must say. This is not a fool-proof system. It’s a human system, so you expect that there will be lapses.
“But I was very shocked that the careless mistake only happened in my ward, and the targeted units were very big units that have large numbers of voters. We would have had over 4,000 voters disenfranchised if this problem was not rectified. And you begin to wonder, How did it happen that it was only in my ward? But INEC, overall, is making a lot of improvements. We believe that there is still room for improvement.” Sylva concluded
