The candidate of the All Progressive Congress in Bayelsa State has on Monday been declared the winner of the 2019 Gubernatorial election in Bayelsa State.
The results were announced on Monday morning by the Returning Officer of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the Bayelsa Gubernatorial election and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin, Prof. Faraday Orunmuwese, who subsequently returned Chief David Lyon as the winner of the election.
Chief David Lyon polled a total of 352,552 to defeat the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Sen. Duoye Diri who polled 143,172 votes.
The All Progressive Congress’ candidate and governor-elect of Bayelsa State, secured his landslide victory by winning in 6 local governments out of a total of 8 local governments in the small oil-rich state. The local governments are, Southern Ijaw; 124,803 votes, Ekeremor L.G.A; 21,489 votes, Nembe; 83,041 votes, Brass; 23,831, Yenagoa; 24,607 and Ogbia; 58,016 votes.
Ogbia local government, where the PDP lost massively is the home council of the former president of Nigeria, Dr Goodluck Jonathan. It is widely believed that the outgoing governor, Mr Seriake Dickson disregarded the former President Jonathan in choosing Sen. Diri as his favoured candidate and that cost him the shocking loss in Ogbia local government.
Read: Nigeria’s ruling party wins an election in a key oil state
The candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Sen. Diri only won in Kolokuma/Opokuma and Sagbama local governments with 15,360 and 60,339 votes respectively.
President Mohammadu Buhari has on Monday, congratulated the governor-elect, Chief David Lyon for his victory, amidst protests in the oil-rich state against the election that many believed was marred by violence.
In another development, the announcement of the Kogi State Gubernatorial results was postponed till 9:00 am on Monday. The postponement was necessitated by the delay in the arrival of results from Lokoja and Ibaji Local Governments.
The Returning Officer of INEC for the Kogi State Guber election, Prof. Ibrahim Umar who announced the postponement said that the postponement would allow the staff to sort things out and give other stakeholders to rest.