No winner has emerged in last weekend’s governorship election in Anambra State as the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has declared the exercise inconclusive.

This is in spite of the fact that Willie Obiano, the candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA won majority of the votes according to results declared.

According to the results announced, APGA got 174,710 votes, followed by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, with 94,956 votes with the All Progressive Congress, APC, polling 92,300 and the Labour Party, LP, placing fourth with 37,446 votes, while the Peoples Progressive Alliance, PPA clinched 5056 votes.

Announcing the decision to conduct a supplementary election next weekend to journalists and election monitors eatly Monday, the returning officer, James Epoke, said the election was declared inconclusive because no candidate polled the statutory 25 percent of votes in two-third of the 21 local government areas in the state.

“For a candidate to emerge as the winner, he must have scored not only the highest number of votes cast, but should also garner 25 per cent in two-third of the local government areas in the state,” Epoke said.

The commission stated that due to the large number of cancelled votes – 113,113 – no candidate scored the required percentage.

Also, the commission examined the difference between the total votes of Obiano who polled the highest and Tony Nwoye, the PDP aspirant, who was the first runner-up and it was discovered that the difference is less than the figure of the cancelled votes.

According to INEC, out of the 1,763,751 voters registered for the election, only 451,826 were accredited, while the total valid votes stood at 413,005 out of 429,549 votes cast.

Idemili North had 89,997 cancelled votes, while 636 were cancelled from Idemili South.

All the 23 parties are expected to participate in the supplementary election to be held at the weekend.