Former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, on Saturday, emerged as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress for the November 11 governorship election in Bayelsa State.
Sylva polled 52, 061 votes to defeat five other contenders to win the governorship ticket at the party’s primary election conducted on Friday and Saturday.
The APC adopted the direct mode electoral system to hold the exercise in the 105 wards and eight local government areas of the state.
A former militant leader, Joshua Macaiver, came second with 2, 078 votes while a former governor-elect, David Lyon, came third with 1,584 votes
Other candidates, Prof Ongoebi Etebu, Isikima Johnson, and Festus Daumiebi scored 1, 277, 584, and 557 votes, respectively.
The chairman of the APC primary election committee for Bayelsa, Maj- Gen Ahmed Jibrin (retd.), said, “With this result, Timipre Sylva, having scored the highest number of votes cast, is hereby declared as the winner.
After declaring the result, the panel went further to conduct an affirmation exercise with five ad-hoc delegates from each of the 105 wards inside the party’s secretariat in the state capital to affirm the outcome of the process
Sylva, who resigned from his ministerial appointment in March, governed the state from 2007 to 2012 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party but did not get a second-term ticket.
Meanwhile, the emergence of Ahmed Ododo as the governorship candidate of the APC in Kogi State has been ratified by a special congress of the party.
The special congress was presided over by the Chairman of the APC primary election committee and Zamfara State Governor, Bello Matawalle, and held on Saturday in Lokoja.
This followed Ododo’s emergence at the party’s governorship direct primary held across all the 239 wards of the state.
Announcing the results for ratification, the Secretary of the committee who represented Matawalle, Patrick Obahiagbon, said, “After carefully conducted primaries devoid of rancour and with no violence recorded anywhere in the state and having scored 78,704 votes, Alhaji Usman Ododo has been returned as the governorship candidate that will fly the party’s flag in the November 11 governorship election in the state.”
Governor Yahaya Bello said the exercise showed that “there is no opposition in Kogi State”.
“We are one big family and we have won everything winnable in the state. We won presidential elections, we won the available three senatorial seats, six out of nine representative members, and 23 out of 25 state assembly members. This is a pass mark by any standard.”
Adeyemi, others kick
Meanwhile, six aspirants who participated in the APC primary in Kogi State have rejected the results.
The aspirants urged the Independent National Electoral Commission and the national secretariat of the APC to disregard the results.
The Senator representing Kogi West, Smart Adeyemi, who led the other aspirants at a press briefing in Abuja on Saturday, maintained that the governorship primary did not hold anywhere in the state.
He said Ododo was announced as the winner even before the commencement of the exercise.
He said, “This is the worst malpractice, the unprecedented worst form of rigging in the history of Nigeria. The results of a governorship primary were written by a group of people.
“The primary election was not conducted. The people came out because all of us mobilised our members and they trooped out in their thousands but the INEC officials and members of the APC panel from the national secretariat did not come out.
“The Chairman of the panel who is the Governor of Zamfara State, Governor Bello Matawale, left abruptly.
“By the constitution of the APC, if the panel chairman did not announce the results, the national secretariat is supposed to send another Chairman. It is not the responsibility of the secretary to announce the results.”
