INEC holds supplementary elections in Kano, Sokoto, 4 others March 23

*Why supplementary election is inevitable – Find details foot of story

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will conduct supplementary election on 23 March in Sokoto, Kano, Adamawa, and three other states where the March 9 elections are deadlocked.

The other states are Benue, Plateau and Bauchi.

This new development followed Tuesday’s report in major media including The DEFENDER informing that INEC had made a u-turn as it decided to use primary data available to it before the results sheets were destroyed to determine the winner same day.

But Festus Okoye, INEC’s National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education, announced in a statement later Tuesday the commission’s decision to rather than do as earlier claimed by INEC source now hold supplementary election in each of the affected states on 23 March.

He said: “The Commission met today, 12th March 2019 and reviewed the conduct of the 29 Governorship and 991 State constituency elections held on 9th March 2019. In all, the Commission declared winners in the Governorship elections in 22 states,” he said.

“However, the Returning Officers in Adamawa. Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto States declared the Governorship elections inconclusive. Consequently. the Commission will conduct supplementary elections on Saturday 23rd March 2019 to conclude the process. Supplementary elections will also hold in polling units in all States where State Assembly elections were declared inconclusive and winners could not be declared. Details of the constituencies including number of polling units and registered voters, will be published on our website tomorrow Wednesday 13th March 2019.

“The elections were declared inconclusive for a combination of reasons, mainly the discontinuation of use of the Smart Card Readers midway into the elections or the failure to deploy them, over-voting and widespread disruption in many polling units.

“Furthermore, the Commission has considered a Report submitted by the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Bauchi State on the disruption of the collation at the Tafawa Balewa LGA collation centre, which led to the cancellation of results for the entire local government. The Commission found that there are issues that need further investigation and has set up a team led by a National Commissioner to resolve them.

Our checks revealed a breakdown of why supplementary elections will take place in the aforementioned six states as follows:

Adamawa State

Umaru Fintiri (PDP) – 367,471

Jibrilla Bindow (APC) – 334,995

Margin – 32,476

Cancelled votes – 40,988

Bauchi State

Bala Mohammed (PDP) – 469,512

Mohammed Abubakar (APC) – 465,453

Margin – 4,059

Cancelled votes – 45,312

Benue State

Samuel Ortom (PDP) – 410,576

Emmanuel Jime (APC) – 329,022

Margin – 81,554

Cancelled votes – 121,019

Kano State

Abba Yusuf (PDP) – 1,014,474

Abdullahi Ganduje (APC) – 987,819

Margin – 26,655

Cancelled votes – 128,572

Plateau State

Simon Lalong (APC) – 583,255

Jerry Useni (PDP) – 538,326

Margin – 44,929

Cancelled votes – 49,377

Sokoto State

Aminu Tambuwal (PDP) – 489,558

Aliyu Ahmed (APC) – 486,145

Margin – 3,413

Cancelled votes – 75,403