*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
