APC, PDP battle in supplementary governorship elections in five states (LIVE UPDATES)

After the March 9 governorship elections across the country, the polls in six states – Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto – were declared inconclusive.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) explained that the decision to declare the elections inconclusive was derived from Clause 34 (e) of its Regulation and Guideline for 2019 General Elections, which specifies that supplementary elections will be held if “the margin of lead between the two leading candidates is not in excess of the total number of registered voters of the Polling Units where elections were not held or were cancelled…”

From results announced by INEC in each of the six states, the margin of lead between the leading candidates is less than the number of registered voters at the polling units where elections were cancelled or postponed for reasons such as over-voting, violence or the failure of smart card readers.

However, INEC is suspending the supplementary election in Adamawa following a court order. Thus, today, supplementary elections will only hold in five states – Bauchi (excluding Tafawa Balewa, where a court order has also forced INEC to suspend its planned collation of results there) Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto.

In Bauchi, after the collation of 19 local governments out of the 20, the All Progressives Congress (APC) trails the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Bala Mohammed, with 4,059 votes. The APC scored a total of 465,453 votes against the PDP’s 469,512 votes.

According to INEC, supplementary election in the state will be held in 36 polling units (PUs) in 28 registration areas in 15 local governments comprising of 22,759 voters.

In Benue, where Samuel Ortom of the PDP, who scored 410,576 votes has a lead of 81,554 votes over Emmanuel Jime of the APC who scored 329,022 votes, the election will be held in 204 polling units in 22 local governments, with the total number of registered voters being 121,299.

In Kano where the PDP leads with 26,655 votes, the election will be held in 208 polling units in 29 local governments with 128,831 voters.

In Plateau where the APC leads with a margin of 44,929, the election will be held in 40 polling units in nine local governments among 48,828 voters.

PREMIUM TIMES, in partnership with the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD), brings you live updates of the supplementary governorship elections across the five states.