A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and governorship aspirant in the party’s Bayelsa state primaries conducted last week, Preye Aganaba, has approached the state High Court seeking nullification of the primaries.
Aganaba has accordingly dragged the APC, the winner of the primaries, Chief David Lyon and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to the court in a suit he filed Thursday.
His grounds for the prayed for nullification are that the primaries which ought to have held on the 4th of September across the 105 wards in the eight local government areas of the state was not actually held.
That since the primaries was not held the declaration of results that produced David Lyon as the candidate of the party was illegal, unconstitutional, null and void and of no effect.
He therefore demanded an order setting aside the results of the APC primary election, which returned Lyon as the candidate of the party for November 16 election.
The aspirant therefore sought the order of the court “restraining the APC from presenting Lyon or submitting his name to INEC as candidate of the APC.
He also wants “An order restraining INEC from receiving, acting on, publishing or listing the name of Lyon as the governorship candidate of APC.
“An order restraining Lyon from parading himself as or holding himself out as the candidate of the APC in the forthcoming Bayelsa State Governorship election”.
After filing the case, he reiterated his earlier statement that the APC primary election in Bayelsa was mockery of democracy. “There was no primary election in Bayelsa and since there was no primary poll, there won’t be a candidate.
“It is only a primary election that produces a candidate for an election. And if anybody is parading himself as a candidate without a primary poll, the person is simply wasting his time.
“We have made our point clear but since they failed to address our complaints that there were no primaries in Bayelsa, we have decided to approach the court to interpret to us whether what happened in Bayelsa could qualify for a primary of a political party.
“I was at my ward. There were no party officials to conduct the primary. That means I didn’t even have the privilege of voting for myself.
“The same with other aspirants. Yet they allocated ridiculous figures to us. Such abnormality can’t stand and we appealing to the court to do justice to it”, he said.
In the primaries conducted on September 4, the Chief Coalition Officer, Senator Dangana Emmanuel, had announced that Chief David Lyon scored 42,138 votes to win while his closet rival, Mrs Diseye Nsirim, scored 1,533 votes.
The likes of Mr Amgbare hauled 633 to place third, former Minister of State for Agriculture, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, scored 571 votes, while Prof. Maureen Etebu was said to have secured 564 votes and to bring the rear was Preye Aganaba with 354 votes.
However, Lokpobiri and others had promptly rejected the outcome of the primaries.
