At some minutes after 2am on Sunday (today) the collation exercise of the rerun governorship election in Bayelsa State was abruptly adjourned to reconvene at
11am.
This was after the results of the poll in four of the local governments were announced. The Independent National Electoral Commission Returning Officer, Mr. Zana Akpagu, adjourned the exercise which was taking place at the Yenagoa Local Government Area Headquarters.
In the declared results, the All Progressives Congress scored 448 votes in Yenagoa LGA while the Peoples Democratic Party polled 839. In Brass LGA, APC had 1,679 and the PDP got 5. In Sagbama LGA, APC scored 119 , PDP, 180 while APC had 139 in Ogbia LGA with PDP polling 1,290 votes.
During the announcement, there was mild drama when the PDP agent at Brass LGA, Fred Agbedi, protested against the result calling for its cancellation.
The APC agent, Dennis Otitio, who was evidently agitated stood up and started talking to the audience without permission from Akpagu.
Akpagu was displeased with the APC agent and threatened to send him out of the hall.
As of 9.45pm on Saturday, it was noticed that results were being brought by returning officers to the state headquarters of the commission.
Meanwhile, no fewer than 12 persons suspected to be militants and security agents were feared killed during the rescheduled election in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area and other polling units across the state.
It was learnt that the 12 included four policemen, two soldiers and six civilians alleged to be militants from the neighbouring Delta State.
It was further learnt that the deaths stemmed from shootings in some LGAs in the state, including Nembe and Ekeremor.
Shootings were said to have started in some parts of the state in the early morning of Saturday, the day of the rerun.
A resident of Ekeremor, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity, said some militants attacked Ekeremor, the hometown of the Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, twice.
The source said the first attack, which was carried out by some militants suspected to be from Delta State was around 1am, while the second attack took place around 3am.
Investigations showed that the attacks, which were aimed at making it impossible for election to be held in the polling units with 13,000 voters’, were repelled by security agents.
Also, as a result of sporadic shootings in Southern Ijaw, two persons were said to have received gunshot wounds in Agoibiri area.
An unconfirmed number of casualties was recorded after the shootings.
The corpses of the dead bodies, numbering seven, were said to have been deposited in Oboro community in Bomadi area of Delta State.
When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer, Bayelsa State Command, Mr. Asinim Butswat, said he had yet to be briefed on the incidents.
He, however, promised to confirm the incident, saying he only heard that some hoodlums snatched electoral materials in Ogbia and that the police had intensified efforts to recover them.
As of the time of going to press, the spokesman had yet to respond to the death claims as well as the effort by the police on the snatched materials.
Some members of Governor Seriake Dickson’s campaign team, the Restoration Campaign Organisation, confirmed that there were shootings and killings in Ekeremor on Saturday.
They claimed that because of the development, election could not be held in nine units in Ekeremor.
They further claimed that in the Amassoma area of Southern Ijaw, elections were only held in some units, while others could not get election materials because of widespread violence.
In Brass, they claimed that election materials did not get to some units, including Akassa area.
The Dickson loyalists also alleged that there were heavy shootings and attacks of the Peoples Democratic Party members in Bassambiri area of Nembe.
According to them, a prominent ex-militant leader and his suppo
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