Governor Duoye Diri of Bayelsa has won his second term bid after scoring 175,196 votes to defeat his closest rival, Timipre Sylva of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who polled 115,262 votes.

On Monday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) returning officer, Farouk Kuta, declared Mr Diri the duly elected governor after a fiercely contested battle with Mr Sylva, a former petroleum minister.

The incumbent governor won in six of the eight local government areas of the state, while Mr Sylva only clinched Brass and Nembe.

Mr Diri polled 24,675 votes in the highly-contested Southern Ijaw Local Government, a major local government thought to be a stronghold of the APC where Mr Sylva’s running mate, Maciver Joshua, is a native.

Mr Sylva, on his part, scored 18,174 votes in Southern Ijaw, promoting APC agents at the collation centre in Yenagoa to reject the results on the grounds of alleged manipulation. The agents asserted that the party polled over 70,000 votes in the LG.

“I want to vehemently protest that in Southern Ijaw, over 50,000 of APC votes were deliberately and systematically cancelled for reasons best known to the collation officers,” asserted a disgruntled Dennis Otiotio, the state APC chairman.

“When the results came, the results we have shows(sic) that APC scored over 70,000 votes in Southern Ijaw. But at the collation centre in this INEC office here, these votes were cancelled without any valid reason whatsoever,” Mr Otiotio claimed.

His remarks contradicted those of the PDP agent, who said the elections were free and fair and that they followed the rules and regulations of INEC.

The total votes cast were 291,212, but 3,658 were rejected, leaving only 287,554 valid votes.