POLL: Should INEC have named Dickson winner?

Seriake Dickson, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), won the Bayelsa state governorship election. So says the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which declared the incumbent governor winner, despite beating his closest opponent by a margin that was lesser than the total number of cancelled votes.

Announcing the winner on Sunday evening, Zana Akpagu, the collation/returning officer, said Dickson polled 134,998 votes, while Timipre Sylva, the first runner-up and candidate of the the All Progressives Congress (APC), polled 86,852 votes.

But Dennis Otitio, agent of APC disagreed immediately, saying total votes cancelled were more than 53,000 while the difference between Dickson and Sylva was over 48,000 votes, in contravention of the electoral law.

Otitio’s claim has already sparked talks that INEC was running out of funds and had to name a winner to avoid declaring this election inconclusive for the second time and having to organise yet another supplementary poll.

Despite the closeness of the margin of defeat with the cancelled votes, the electoral law clearly forbids a situation where the former is less than the latter. This is what happened in the case, and there will be discussions, for a long time to come, on how INEC chose to handle it.

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