Bayelsa guber: How Lyon clinched APC ticket, Buhari’s ex-Minister kicks

David Lyon has emerged the flag bearer of All Progressives Congress (APC) for the November 16 Bayelsa state governorship election in the state.

According to the results announced by the Collation Officer Senator Emmanuel Ocheja, Chief Lyon polled a total of 42,138, votes to defeat five other aspirants.

Mrs Desiye Nsirim came a distant second with 1,533, while Chief Ebitimi Amgbare came third with 633 votes. 

The result further revealed that Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development polled 571 votes to come fourth while Prof Ongoebi Etebu and Prince Preye Aganaba got 564 and 354 votes respectively.

Senator Ocheja, who was flanked by the other national and state officers of the party said he was standing in for the returning officer and Governor of Yobe State, Mai-Mala Buni, who he disclosed was unavoidable absent.

He said six aspirants contested the election, and that the mode of the exercise was ‘Direct Primaries, Option A-4, ‘ adopted by the stakeholders and leaders of the party in the state then, ratified by the National Executive Committee (NEC).
Meanwhile, Senator Lokpobiri has rejected the outcome of the governorship primaries.

He described it as a charade and said the only authentic person in position to conduct and declare result of the Governorship primaries was the governor of Yobe State.

Commenting on the outcome of the primaries, the Minister of State for Petroleum and former governor, Chief Timipre Sylva, said there was no time better than now for the APC to take over Bayelsa State.

Sylva stated this while speaking to newsmen after voting during the APC primaries in Okpoama Ward 4 in Brass Local Government Area of the state where the people of Okpoama community overwhelmingly threw their weight behind David Lyon, a frontline aspirant in the governorship primary election.

The APC state leader said the primary election was a peaceful and orderly.

He said members of the party were in high spirit and there nothing would stop APC from winning Bayelsa governorship election in November.

He said, “I’m happy at last we have had a very peaceful and orderly primary in this ward. I just wanted to be here. What I wanted to be sure of was that everybody conducted themselves very well especially after all the events of the previous days; the court order and the vacating of the court order and things like that. 

“I haven’t followed up the PDP primaries but I understood there was a lot of violence last night and results have been announced. We hope that they conducted themselves very well. 

“We decided to adopt the direct primary mode. Everybody is involved, every member of the party is involved. This is a test of what we will present at the general election. We want our people to be fully involved so that at least we could test our strength and I believe that because of this, we now know that we have the strength of numbers to win the election in November 16, 2019.”

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