Contrary to expectations of the ‘Obidients,’ supporters of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, that the party will win some state governorship seats in landslide particularly in the South-East region of the country, Labour Party has failed to secure a single state.
As of today (Tuesday), the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has declared official results in 24 out of the 28 states where governorship elections were held.
In the results declared so far by INEC, the ruling party, APC and the PDP have dominated the wins by clinching 15 and 8 states respectively, while the NNPP won only in Kano state.
Meanwhile, hopes are still high for the Obidients in some of the states INEC declared inconclusive (Adamawa, Kebbi) and Abia, Enugu, where collation of results were suspended.
States won by APC, PDP, NNPP
Results declared by INEC so far, indicated that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC won the governorship polls in 15 states including Sokoto, Katsina, Jigawa, Gombe, Lagos, Kwara, Niger, Yobe, Nasarawa, C’River, Ebonyi, Ogun, Benue, Kaduna and Borno.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP trail the APC with eight state, which include: Plateau, Zamfara, Bauchi, Taraba, Oyo, Delta, Rivers and Akwa Ibom states, while the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP won in Kano.
But, surprisingly, Labour Party has yet to secure one state across the 28 states where INEC conducted governorship elections.
Labour Party, PDP battle for Abia, Enugu
The results of the election in Abia and Enugu States have been witnessing delay due to dispute between the Labour Party and the PDP over the results from some local government areas.
Meanwhile, as part of efforts to resolve the issues, INEC suspended further collation of the governorship election results pending a review of the process of the contentious balloting in parts of the two states.
INEC had on Sunday, declared Governors Seyi Makinde (Oyo, PDP) Dapo Abiodun (Ogun, APC), Muhammadu Yahaya (Gombe, APC), Babatunde Sanwo-Olu (Lagos, APC), Mai Mala Buni (Yobe, APC) and Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq (Kwara, APC) the winners of the governorship election.
Also, the PDP candidate in Akwa Ibom State, Pastor Umo Eno and Dr Dikko Radda of the APC in Katsina also emerged as the governors-elect.
The APC candidate in Sokoto State, Ahmed Sokoto, and his counterpart in Jigawa State, Namadi Dammodi, were declared governors-elect.
Ganduje, Tambuwal, Ortom lose out
However, the anointed candidates of the Kano State Governor, Umar Ganduje; his counterpart for Plateau State, Simon Lalong, Aminu Tambuwal (Sokoto) and Samuel Ortom (Benue) were defeated by the opposition parties.
The NNPP won in Kano as its candidate, Abba Yusuf, was declared the governor-elect, defeating Yusuf Gawuna of the ruling APC.
Gawuna, who is the deputy governor of the state, was Ganduje’s anointed candidate, while Yusuf was backed by the NNPP presidential candidate and ex-Kano governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso.
The INEC returning officer, Ahmad Ibrahim, announced that Yusuf won the election with 1,019,602 votes, while Gawuna got 890,705 votes.
Yusuf had contested against Ganduje in 2019 in what was regarded as a very controversial election, which went into supplementary polls in 28 out of the 44 local government areas in the state.
Vanguard