Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has declared the Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party,PDP, Peter Mbah , winner of the March 18 Governorship election .
Declaring the results on Wednesday at the INEC headquarters, Enugu, the state Returning Officer and Vice Chancellor of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Prof. Maduebibisi Ofo-Iwe, said that Mbah got 160,895, to beat his closest opponent, Chijioke Edeoga of the Labour Party, who scored 157,552 votes. Uche Nnaji of the All Progressives Congress, APC scored 14,575, and Frank Nweke,Jnr of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA scored 17,983 .
The result was announced four days after the conduct of the election. Speaking before announcing the results,
Prof Iwe, said that there was controversy surrounding the Nkanu East local government and Nsukka local government areas’ results, as a result, the issue was taken to INEC headquarters ,Abuja for a review.
“There was a need for a review and the review was done according to what was seen on the field,”he said. Iwe appealed for calm.
” We are here to manage what we did as umpires. We decided to go through it all step by step, am so passionate about the job am doing, am so keen about the job am doing., ” he said.
The Returning Officer explained that he was not part of the team that carried out the review.
Below is the breakdown of the result,
PDP 160,895
APC 14,575
APGA 17,983
Labour 157,552
Registered voters 211,2793
Accredited voter 381,971
Total Valid votes 358,463
Total Rejected votes 9,088
Total votes cast 367,551
Iwe declared that “Mbah Peter Ndubuisi of Peoples Democratic Party, having satisfied the requirement of the law is hereby declared the winner and returned elected.”
Meanwhile, agents of Labour Party and APC did not sign the result, they declined when called upon to sign.
Author: Maureen Ikpeama