Bayelsa State House of Assembly Lawmaker-elect, for Southern Ijaw Constituency 4, Chief Ben Selekaye Victor, has challenged his opponents in the March 18, House of Assembly elections in the state to approach the court to question his victory in the polls.
Chief Victor, who called his opponents bad losers, disclosed this in an exclusive interview with Media Talk Africa on Thursday in Yenagoa, the state capital.
Media Talk Africa, gathered that the Lawmaker-elect on the Platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was declared the winner of the election after he polled 5,230 votes, to defeat his closest rival, Igbadiwei Ebi Macdonald of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who got 5114.
He said he won his election free and fair without any form of monetary inducement on the electorate despite the failure of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, to effectively work in three of his strongholds.
Victor claimed that his opponents were so lucky to come close due to the disenfranchisement of over one thousand legitimate voters in his stronghold through faulty BVAS machines.
His words “It’s so unfortunate that my opponents are bad losers. In 2019 I was leading them with 2500 votes, but they came with 7900 votes from a small community and we were declared the winner and heaven didn’t fall.
Am an Ezetu man, and we’re nomads by nature, and our people are everywhere in the globe. During the voter registration, we ensured that they were all mobilised to come back home and register from all the fishing settlements around the gulf of Guinea. They all voted in their numbers during the elections too, because they saw this as the last shot they have to elect their own and have a fair share in governance.
Do you know that of all the BVAS sent by INEC to us, three failed and we didn’t complain because we know what we already did to the conscience of our people during campaigns? Our people were disenfranchised, over a thousand of them didn’t participate after they abandoned their trades but we managed the remaining unit and still won.
They all fail, even my party stalwarts voted against me but still, I won. They said they are going to court, I am waiting for them.
This is the time to work hard so my people can feel the impact of governance. Constituency 4, is the most populated and the biggest constituency in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area, of Bayelsa State, and sadly 70 percent of the communities out of the thirty-two communities that make up the constituency does not have a primary school not alone a secondary school.
