Governorship poll update: APC wins 15 states, PDP six, NNPP takes one

The Independent National Electoral Commission on Monday released more results from Saturday’s governorship election with anointed candidates of some governors losing the poll.

All the results so far declared as of 10 pm on Monday indicated that the All Progressives Congress 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 on the other hand won Plateau, Bauchi, Oyo, Delta, Rivers and Akwa Ibom states while the New Nigeria Peoples Party emerged victorious in Kano.

The results of the election in Abia and Enugu States were delayed following the dispute between the Labour Party and the PDP over the results from some local government areas.

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.

On Sunday, INEC 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.

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.

Ganduje failed the NNPP in Kano as the opposition candidate, Abba Yusuf, was declared the governor-elect, defeating Yusuf Gawuna.

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.