The candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Prof Charles Soludo, is set to be declared the winner of Saturday’s Anambra State governorship election as results so far released by the Independent National Electoral Commission indicate that he scored a total of 103,946 votes and won the election in 18 out of the-21 local government areas of the state.
Soludo’s closest rival, Valentine Ozigbo of the People’s Democratic Party scored 51,322 and won in only one local government area, Ogbaru LGA.
Candidate of the Young Progressive Party, Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, won in Nnewi North local government.
Andy Uba, governorship candidate of APC, the All Progressives Congress, is yet to win any local government.
Anambra State has 21 local government areas. The result for the Idemili South Local Government Area could not be announced as a result of a dispute between the returning officer and the supervising polling officer, while election did not hold in the Ihiala Local Government Area due to the failure of the Bimodal Verification Accreditation system, BVAS.
On Saturday, polling could not commence until around 3pm in more than 60 per cent of all the polling units in all the 21 local government areas and wards in the state, with the BVAS machines failing to verify the fingerprint or capture passport photograph of the voters.
Besides incidences of few and isolated skirmishes, in places like Orumba North LGA where suspected thugs attacked the local government’s collation centre, the elections were largely without violence, in spite of the heightened spate of insecurity in the state and defying doomsday predictions of analysts.
However, the State Returning Officer for the election, Florence Obi, and vice-chancellor of University of Calabar, has declared the election inconclusive, citing no election in Ihiala Local Government Area which has over 148,000 registered voters.
“Based on constitutional provision and consideration of the Electoral Act as well as the revised regulations and guidelines for the conduct of elections issued by the commission, supplementary election is indicated for Ihiala Local Government Area,” the state returning officer, Mrs Obi said.
She said the constitution provides for a candidate to secure both the highest number of votes cast and 25 per cent of votes cast in at least two-third of the local government areas of the state to declare the winner.
“Therefore, it is important to complete the election in Ihiala to make this determination,” she said.
Meanwhile, the APC has accused APGA of rigging.
The Chairman of the APC in the state, Chief Basil Ejidike, said, “What is happening in Anambra is never an election, but big time electoral fraud and malpractice. We want the whole world to hear our voice that we will never accept the outcome of the Anambra gubernatorial election.
“We want INEC to cancel the election and fix a date for a fresh election devoid of manipulation and malpractices. But if INEC goes ahead to announce the results, we will definitely challenge the election process in the court of law, up to the Supreme Court. Nobody can intimidate us.”
