The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, IN Taraba State, Darius Ishiaku has won the rerun polls held over the weekend in Taraba State.

His victory has put paid to speculations that Nigeria would have its first female governor sworn into office.

At the end of the keenly contested rerun election, Ishiaku garnered 53, 120 votes to effectively beat the All Progressive Congress candidate, Aisha Al-Hassan who was able to secure 13,599 votes.

When the votes earned by both candidates in the April 11 and April 25 elections were added, Ishiaku’s cumulative votes tallied 360,318 while APC’s Al-Hassan secured a total of 275,985 ballots.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, returning  officer for the state, Muhammad  Kyari, who declared the PDP candidate winner of the contest, added that he scored the highest number of votes and won a quarter of the votes in almost all the local government areas in the state.

Meanwhile APC candidate, a sitting senator, has rejected the results of the poll as announced by INEC.

At a press conference in Jalingo, shortly after the announcement of the results, Alhassan described the entire elections process as a “daylight robbery” adding her party was preparing to contest the results in the elections petitions tribunal.

“The combined governorship elections in Taraba were characterized by violence, massive rigging, ballot snatching and abuse of the card readers in substantial parts of the state by the PDP and their allies,” she noted.

She said the results ascribed to communities such as Wukari, Donga, Takum, Sardauna, Zing, Yorro, Kurmi and some parts of Ussa, Karim-Lamido, Bali, Ardo-Kola and Lau local government areas were not acceptable and did not reflect the wished of the people as expressed by their votes.

It would be recalled that the APC candidate equally called a similar press parley before the rerun polls were held where she expressed reservations about the willingness of the INEC in the state to conduct a free and fair polls citing cases of bias and irregularity in the earlier election.

The APC candidate had called for an outright cancellation of the entire election.