Sylva gears up with 224 witnesses to contest Diri’s re-election in Bayelsa

The Bayelsa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal got back into action in Abuja on Wednesday as Mr. Timipre Sylva from the All Progressives Congress (APC) presented  224 witnesses to challenge Governor Douye Diri’s re-election.

Sylva, who was once the governor of the state from 2008 to 2012 and recently served as the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources under Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is challenging the outcome of the gubernatorial election that took place on November 11, 2023.

He disclosed that the witnesses, some of whom appeared before the Justice Adekunele Adeleye-led three-member panel tribunal on Wednesday, were drawn from three Local Government Areas in the state.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had declared that governor Diri who was the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, garnered a total of 175, 196 votes to defeat his closest rival, Sylva, who polled 110, 108 votes.

However, dissatisfied with the outcome of the poll, Sylva, through his legal team led by Mr. Tunde Falola, SAN, approached the tribunal, alleging that results of the election in three LGAs, were wrongly excluded.

He told the court that whereas election held in Southern Ijaw, Ogbia and Nembe LGAs, however, INEC, voided polling unit results that were forwarded for collation.

Sylva insisted that contrary to INEC’s position that election did not hold in the affected LGAs, its officials supervised the election and sent results from the various polling units to the collation center.

According to Sylva, had it been that results from the three LGAs, which he described as his strongholds, were included, he would have won the gubernatorial contest.

Besides, he alleged that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines, were bypassed in some polling units.

The APC candidate said his proposed witnesses were from all the affected polling units in the state.