Stakeholders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) have embarked on a peaceful protest over the alleged disenfranchisement of their members in Nembe-Bassambiri during Saturday’s off-cycle governorship election in Bayelsa State.
The party stakeholders took the protest to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) head office at Swali in Yenagoa yesterday morning.
The protesters were received and addressed by the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr Obo Effanga.
After being addressed, the protesters stopped their demonstration and turned the barricaded road by security agents into a carnival.
Many of them were seen dancing away as they awaited the outcome of the results collation.
The security around the INEC office is as impregnable as different arms of security agents were present. People without any means of identification were turned back from accessing the INEC office.
The Bayelsa State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Biriyai Sambo SAN, who spoke to journalists said they were at the INEC office to register their protest on the disenfranchisement of party members in the Nembe-Bassambiri in Nembe local government area of the state.
He said: “Precisely on November 10, most of our members in about 60 buses left Yenagoa for Nembe with escorts. When we got there, the SWAT team was blocking the entrance into Nembe with other All Progressives Congress (APC) acclaimed youths and they said we should come down.
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“Immediately, one of our boys, his name is Barrister Akili, came down, and they manhandled him. He just escaped by a whisker. Thereafter, they started threatening them, up to the extent that they threw tear gas at us. They said they could not come in, most of them were scared for their life, so they had to leave.
“But subsequently, we now saw that there was no voting, there was no election in Nembe-Bassambiri, Constituencies 2 and 3. We now found out that results started coming out on social media; results that were uploaded on the BVAS, the kind of results that were outrageous. We don’t know where they were coming from.”
“We are here to appeal to INEC; we are not coming to discourage INEC. We just want them to follow the rule of law and ensure that they do what is right in line with the President’s resolve that there have to be free and fair elections in this country.
“They would have allowed everybody to go into Nembe-Bassambiri and vote; one man, one vote. But this one none of us went in there to vote. Only the APC people were there, they manipulated everything and then started posting results on social media.
“We don’t want that to continue. We are here to appeal to INEC that they should look into those results and do what is right in line with the rule of law. There has to be a fair play in our electioneering process.”
Addressing the protesters, the INEC REC, Mr Obo Effanga represented by the head of Voter Education and Publicity, Mr Wilfred Ifogah, said the Commission is not joking with the Bimodal Voter Automated System (BVAS).
He assured them that the units where the BVAS were not used would be cancelled.
He said: “No BVAS, no election in that particular unit, and it will be cancelled, so that is the assurance I am giving you right now.
“This protest definitely will get to the REC. I want to thank you all and assure you that other processes will continue at the collation centre. It will also be presented before the Collation Officer.”