Officals of INEC posted to Brass Local Government for the gubernatorial election have been kidnapped by the APC candidate, Chief Timipre Sylva. They were allegedly held hostage after they refused to heed Sylva’s instructions to accept results produced by his foot-soldiers, against the requirements of the law.
This is even as a PDP youth, Berepelenyo George Sibo has been killed by thugs loyal to Sylva, at the INEC office at Twon-Brass headquarters of Brass LGA.
The PDP supporter was said to insisted that the results brought in by Sylva from Okpoama would not be accepted, as they were not a product of a proper election, habing not used the BVAS to accredit the voters in the area.
INEC had insisted that any results that are not produced without the use of the BVAS machines for accreditation would not be accepted. In Okpoama and Opu Nembe, Sylva’s men had generated results that did not come from voters who were accreditated by the BVAS.
On Saturday night, there were reports that Sylva ordered all result sheets and other election materials used for the Okpoama election be locked up in a room, while he left for Yenagoa. The results were eventually uploaded into the irev, showing bogus figures that were far from the figures for accredited people, by the BVAS.
The discovery prompted a protest on the streets on Yenagoa on Sunday morning. INEC, in its verified twitter account on Sunday said “the commission is closely watching the situation in Brass LGA of Bayelsa State where our officials are held hostage.
“This is detrimental to credible elections. We call on the security agencies to immediately facilitate their release.”
Sylva is from Brass LGA. But he also claims Opu Nembe because the mother is from there. These are the two places where there have been allegations of him doctoring the election results.
Sylva had been disappointed that the BVAS machines which he pre-loaded before the election did not function as planned. He was also disappointed that the BVAS could not transmit the already prepared results he had, into the servers he created.
The frustration may have led him to consider the option of kidnapping electoral officials and forcing them to accept his own results which were written even before the exercise commenced. The results show different figures from the information available on the BVAS machines as representing the correct number of accredited voters.
Credit: FENGU.INFO