Kogi: Intrigues, Drama As INEC Returns Yahaya Bello

Gov. Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been declared winner of the governorship election held in Kogi State on Nov. 16.

The declaration of the results at the collation centre was, however, marked with drama especially as the agent of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP who refused to endorse the results he said were fabricated also taunted the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC on the use of electronic transmission.

The Returning Officer of the election, Prof. Ibrahim Garba, who announced the results in Lokoja on Monday said that Bello polled 406,222 votes to beat 24 other contestants, including Mr Musa Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who polled 189,704 votes.

Mrs Natasha Akpoti, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party came third by scoring 9,482 votes, Mrs. Justina Abanida of the African Democratic Party scored 706 votes to come fourth while the candidate of PDF came fifth with 624 votes.

Garba said that Bello having scored the majority of votes and other constitutional requirements is declared the winner.

He said that 636,202 out of the 1,636,350 registered voters in the state were accredited for the election out of which 624,514 eventually voted.

Garba gave total valid votes cast during the election as 610,744 , number of rejected votes was 13,770 while cancelled votes were 149,576 votes.

The PDP agent repeatedly objected to the declaration of the local government results and particularly asked for the cancellation of the results brought from Okene and Adavi Local Government Areas in Kogi Central where he said agents and even INEC staff were not allowed in the collation.

In Okene, Bello scored about 85% of the votes which the PDP agent said was suspicious.

He brought the returning officer to his wits end at the middle of the collation on Monday when one of the local government returning officers claimed a mistake in figures which he said was brought to his attention by the IT officer who used his record in the computer to correct it.

In reference to the post 2019 General Election claim of INEC that it didn’t use electronic transmission, the PDP agent now asked the basis of rectifying figures through the computer?

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