Incidences of over-voting put a question mark on the Bonny Youths Federation (BYF) elections which held today in Bonny, headquarters of Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State.

After the voting process, which began several hours behind schedule due to some skirmishes resulting from alleged attempts to disqualify some contestants through the backdoor, Emmanuel Finecountry of the Restoration Team was declared winner of the polls.

He won his top contender, Clarkson Hart with 79 votes while the latter scored 30 votes with four votes declared invalid, making a total tally of 113 votes.

The number of delegates for the elections was 105 which represents a total of three delegates from each of the 35 chieftaincy houses listed for the elections.

Same discrepancy was witnessed in all other positions thus indicating that more ballot papers were produced than the number of delegates giving credence to insinuations that the elections was preconfigured to be rigged in a particular direction.

Noting these anomalies, Director General of the Rebirth Team, Larry Igbaningo alleged that double ballot papers might have been allotted to delegates supporting his opponent as the total tally of ballots overshot the number of delegates.

“Only God knows how they managed to dish out two, two ballot papers to our opponent’s supporters and delegates. Instead of having 105 or 104 – because one person from Abraham-Hart (House) was not part of the election because of his wedding in Port Harcourt.”

“So, ordinarily we are supposed to have the total number of accredited voters to be 104 rather than having less number of votes considering the fact that there are voice votes, unused votes and all that we are having above the number of delegates. I wonder how they want to explain that. If you want to rig elections, there are ways you rig elections not this kind of thing.”

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In a chat with Kristina Reports, an observer in the election who preferred anonymity, expressed disappointment with the process, decrying the obvious irregularities especially as witnessed in the incidences of over-voting during the polls.

Also, an agent of one of the contestants who proffered not to be named, who promised that his principal would seek redress using the appropriate channels, flayed the conduct of the polls, pointing out that “apparently, the committee didn’t want to quit the stage. So, they contrived ways to ensure the election was a flop in order continue their stay in office”.

But a member of the BYF Caretaker Committee who preferred anonymity as he was not authorized to speak for the CTC, stated otherwise, explaining that “you know situations like this where we had very short time to deal with all the processes there was bound to be mistakes here and there”.

“We are not perfect but we tried our best. If we wanted to continue to remain in office, we wouldn’t be rushing the elections to conclude it in seven days. There might have been some oversights here and there but we can be rest assured now that we have effectively handed back the BYF to its true owners, the youths of Bonny Kingdom”.

Aside the incidences of over-voting, there were several irregularities such the attempted disqualification of some contestants on the morning of the elections which almost sparked off violence at the venue of the elections but for the swift intervention of the security agencies.

A combined team of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Nigerian Army (NA), Nigerian Navy (NN), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), and Department of State Services (DSS) kept watch over the Ibanise Hall, venue of the election to maintain calm and orderliness.