Timipre Sylva, who formerly served as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, has secured the All Progressives Congress (APC) nomination for the upcoming Bayelsa State gubernatorial election on November 11th. Sylva triumphed over five other candidates by garnering 52,061 votes in the APC primary election, which employed a direct mode electoral system in the state’s 105 wards and eight local government areas.
Joshua Macaiver, a former militant leader, came in second place with 2,078 votes, while David Lyon, a former APC governor-elect in Bayelsa State, came third with 1,584 votes. The remaining contestants, including Prof. Ongoebi Etebu, Isikima Johnson, and Festus Daumiebi, achieved scores of 1,277 votes, 584 votes, and 557 votes, respectively.
The chairman of the APC primary election committee for Bayelsa, Major General Ahmed Jibrin (retd.), announced Sylva’s victory at the party’s Yenagoa secretariat on Saturday.
General Ahmed said, “With this result, Timipre Marlin Sylva, having scored the highest number of votes cast is hereby declared as the winner.
“By the power conferred on me by the APC National Working Committee, I declare Chief Timipre Marlin Sylva as the winner of this election.”
Following the announcement of the primary election results, the committee proceeded to perform an affirmation exercise with five temporary delegates from each of the 105 wards at the party’s secretariat in the state capital to confirm the legitimacy of the process.
Timipre Sylva resigned from his position as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources in March to run for the APC governorship primaries in Bayelsa. He previously governed the state from 2007 to 2012 under the PDP banner, but the party declined to nominate him for a second term. Sylva later switched to the APC and became the party’s gubernatorial candidate in 2015, but he lost to the then-incumbent PDP governor, Seriake Dickson.
