THE Imo State governor and candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the ongoing governorship election, Hope Uzodimma, has been announced as the winner in each of the 27 local governments of the State.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) began collating results from all the state LGAs, at around 02:30 a.m. on Sunday, November 12, and concluded it by 8:30am of the same day.
Meanwhile, the state Returning Officer for the election, Abayomi Fasina, who is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oye, Ado Ekiti, Ekiti state, announced an hour break to enable him to compute the final result and declare the winner of the election.
This development was amid the growing controversy surrounding the integrity and credibility of the election as the Labour Party’s agents consistently questioned how the INEC officials arrived at the results.
The ICIR reports how a Labour party’s agent was mobbed by five individuals and was subsequently bundled out of the collation Centre, alongside other colleagues on Sunday.
At the end of the announcement of local government results at 08:30 a.m. on Sunday, the Returning Officer, Abayomi Fasina, vice chancellor of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Ekiti State, announced that the collation centre would go on an hour break and reconvene to announce the winner formally.
The ICIR reports that although 18 political parties contest the governorship seat, it’s a four man race.
According to INEC, the number of registered voters in the state for the poll was 2,419,922, with 2,318,919 Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) collected.
Usman Mustapha is a solution journalist with International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: [email protected]. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M