A group, Niger Delta Democratic Watch (NDDW), has raised an alarm over the alleged plot by the defeated candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the recently conducted governorship election in Bayelsa State, Chief Timipre Sylva in the recruitment of Information Technology (IT) experts to compromise already declared election results.
But the APC has dismissed the allegation, declaring that Governor Douye Diri and his party, Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) are gripped by desperation and fear.
According to the group, Sylva and his recruited experts are working to give credence and backing to the “cooked figures” he allocated to himself in some polling units where INEC either rejected or cancelled the compromised votes for various reasons including bypass of BVAS, massive thumbprinting and outright manipulation of the electoral process.
NDDW in a statement issued by Comrade Joseph Dennis, stated that preliminary investigation showed that the suspected IT experts have been assembled somewhere in Lagos State to fraudulently re-configure the voters accreditation on the BVAS to align with the polling units results uploaded on the INEC portal.
“This is really laughable. A man so unpopular with Bayelsans wants to grab the governorship seat through the back door. Why does everything around Sylva have to be deceit and fraud?
“This is a man who attempted to manipulate the votes in several polling units safe for the eagle eyes of the INEC polling officers, agents of the PDP and agents of other political parties. Sadly, Sylva, escaped with the “stolen votes” in his village Okpoama, Ewoama and Nembe-Bassambiri but his APC agents were caught red handed rigging in different polling units and wards in Southern Ijaw LGA and other Local Government Areas”
However, the APC in its reaction by its publicity secretary, Doifie Buokoribo titled, ‘’ Bayelsa 2023: Who’s Afraid of The Election Courts’’ noted that though the statement was attributed to a certain group, named Niger Delta Democratic Watch, the APC was ‘’aware that it is being circulated from Government House, Yenagoa, by aides of the embattled Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, who knows he did not win the last election.’’
According to Buokoribo, since the election has since ended, and the BVAS machines are with INEC, the question of Sylva camping people in Lagos or anywhere to reconfigure BVAS machines for a process that has already been concluded does not make sense.
‘’As far as we know, Diri and his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), worked in cahoots with INEC to compromise the November 11 election.
‘’Votes were arbitrarily cancelled in areas where the APC won overwhelmingly, and there were huge incidents of over-voting in areas where the PDP was declared victorious. If anyone stole the votes, it was PDP and Diri. Sylva has since approached the Election Tribunal to prove that PDP worked with INEC to rig him out.
”To now suddenly allege that Sylva is trying to compromise the BVAS in the custody of INEC shows how low Diri and his cohorts can get in trying to cover up or divert attention from their electoral fraud, just when it is about to be exposed. It raises a pertinent question: Who is afraid of the election courts?’’
