Wahala dey ooo...No fewer than 13 political parties in
Bayelsa State, including the All Progressives Congress, have pulled out
of the postponed State House of Assembly polls scheduled for Saturday
(today).
Alliance for Democracy, Labour Party,
Social Democratic Party and Democratic Peoples Party are among the
remaining 12 political parties boycotting today’s poll.
The parties, under the aegis of
Coalition of Political Parties in Bayelsa, said at a press conference in
Yenagoa, on Friday, that they took the decision to boycott the polls
because INEC had allegedly colluded with the Peoples Democratic Party to
rig the polls.
The Independent National Electoral Commission had last week rescheduled elections in eight constituencies in the state.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr.
Baritor Kpagih, had named the affected constituencies as Ekeremor
Constituencies 1, 2 and 3; Kolokuma/Opokuma constituencies 1 and 2;
Sagbama constituencies 1 and 2; and Southern Ijaw Constituency 1.
Kpagih had explained that the shift in
the affected constituencies in four Local Government Areas of the state
was in agreement with the stance by stakeholders that no election should
take place in the constituencies without full complement of ballot
papers.
The communiqué signed by chairmen of the
13 political parties alleged that INEC had entered into concrete
agreement with the ruling PDP in the state to undo other political
parties.
The parties said, “Their ploy is to
hoard all the sensitive electoral materials – result sheets inclusive,
such that after the conduct of the election with the non-sensitive
materials, the INEC staff, the electoral officer of the eight local
governments and other ad-hoc staff in the state will converge on
designated places to enter their manufactured results into the original
result sheet in favour of the PDP.
“The PDP had perfected an illicit
arrangement to use the military to intimidate, harass and muzzle other
candidates and genuine voters in a ploy to influence the election in
favour of the PDP.
“The PDP intends to repeat their
manipulative tendencies as experienced in the recently conducted state
Assembly elections where INEC manipulated the result in favour of the
PDP.”
The parties also alleged that armed
military men were guarding the INEC staff, the EOs and ad-hoc staff
while they illicitly entered fake results into the original results.
They said in the previous polls, armed
military men were shooting sporadically in a deliberate bid to
intimidate the electorate during the election.
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