CANDIDATE of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Adamawa State gubernatorial election, Ahmadu Fintiri, has been declared the winner of the contest and the governor-elect of the state.

Fintiri was returned elected by Andrew Haruna, the Adamawa State returning officer, in the early hours of Friday at the state’s headquarter of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Yola.

Fintiri defeated the incumbent governor, Jibrila Bindow of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with 376,552 votes against 336,386. The initial election held on March 9 was declared inconclusive because the number of cancelled votes was higher than the margin of lead between Fintiri and Bindow.

However, the conduct of a supplementary poll was stalled following a suit filed by one Mustafa Shaba, the candidate of the Movement For Restoration and Defense for Democracy (MRDD), who claimed that INEC deliberately and illegally excluded his party from the election as the commission did not include the party’s name and logo on the ballot paper.

Following the suit, the court ordered that the scheduled supplementary election should be suspended pending the determination of the suit. The case was eventually decided on Tuesday and the court vacated the restriction order on INEC.

This paved the way for INEC to complete the process after which Fintiri was declared victorious.

When he is sworn into office on May 29, Fintiri, a former speaker of the Adamawa State House of Assembly, would be having his second stint as the governor of Adamawa State, having been an acting governor for a brief moment in 2014 after overseeing the impeachment of the then governor, Murtala Nyako, and his deputy, Bala Ngilari.