INEC Declares Winner Of Kogi Governorship Election

The All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in the Kogi election, Yahaya Bello, has been declared as the winner of the exercise held on Saturday.

The Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) Returning Officer for the election, Professor Ibrahim Umar, said Bello polled a massive 406,222 votes to defeat his rival, Musa Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored 189,704 votes to emerge second.

He said the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Natasha Akpoti, garnered a total of 9,482 votes.

Professor Umar declared the winner following the collation of results from all 21 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state, an exercise which lasted more than 24 hours.

After several hours of collating the results from 19 LGAs, Professor Umar had announced on Sunday night that the exercise would continue on Monday morning.

Of the results collated before the exercise was suspended, it was a close battle between Bello who won 10 LGAs and Wada who claimed nine LGAs while Natasha had yet to win any local government.

At the resumption of the exercise, the results of the remaining two local governments – Ibaji and Lokoja – were collated, paving the way for the declaration of the winner of the election.

Announcing the final results of the election, the returning officer noted that a total of 1,646,350 people registered for the election while 636,202 were accredited to vote.

He explained that the margin between the winner of the election and the runner-up was 216,518 votes.