The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has postponed the State House of Assembly election in eight of the 24 constituencies of Bayelsa.

Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Bayelsa, Mr. Baritor Kpagih, said in a statement yesterday that the postponement became inevitable after pirates disrupted the distribution of election materials to coastal areas in the state, thus adversely affecting the conduct of today’s elections in the affected areas.

According to the REC, the affected councils are Ekeremor Constituencies 1, 2, and 3, Kolokuma/Opokuma Constituencies 1 and 2, Sagbama Constituencies 1 and 2 and Southern Ijaw Constituency 1.

His words: “The election was shifted because of the position of stakeholders that election should not hold ‘without full complements of the ballot papers. They maintained that unless there was 100 percent supply of ballot papers, there would be no elections.

“And unfortunately from what we received from INEC headquarters from Abuja, there were some shortfalls; that was why we had to shift the elections.

“Following the stand of the stakeholders ‎ that no election should take place in the state without full complement of ballot papers, having regard to the total PVC distributed, the State House of Assembly election slated for Saturday, the 11th of April, 2015, in Bayelsa State has been rescheduled to Saturday the 18th day of April, 2015 in the affected constituencies.”

Kpagih said however that the election would hold today as scheduled in the rest 16 constituencies.