Senate President Ahmad Lawan wins Yobe North Senate seat by landslide

The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has won, by a landslide, the Senatorial election for Yobe North, in Yobe State.

The Senate President, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was formally declared winner on Sunday night by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which announced that Mr Lawan polled 91,318 votes.

That performance represents 74.7 percent of the total valid votes (122,193), to defeat his closest rival, Bello Ilu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 22,849 votes.

This is the seventh parliamentary election won consecutively by Mr Lawan into the National Assembly since 1999, the first two of which gave him ticket to the House of Representatives while the last five gave him ticket to the Senate.

There was controversy over Mr Lawan’s candidature for the election. He had initially tried to be president. But after he was defeated in the presidential primary by Bola Tinubu, he returned to join the senatorial race.

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At the time he joined the senatorial race, the party had nominated a candidate in the person of Bashir Machina.

However, in a bid to accommodate Mr Lawan, the APC shoved Mr Machina aside, conducted a fresh primary, which the senate president won.

The party then proceeded to submit the senate president’s name to INEC as its candidate for the senatorial zone.

The protracted battle over the ticket went all the way to Nigeria’s Supreme Court, which, surprisingly, resolved it in favour of Mr Lawan.