The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Ahmed Aliyu, and Senator Aliyu Wamakko have called Governor Aminu Tambuwal of the Peoples Democratic Party to congratulate him on his victory in the election.

The Twitter handle of the Sokoto Government House revealed the congratulatory calls, moments after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) formally declared Mr Tambuwal winner of the election.

He won by a small margin of 342 votes.

Mr Aliyu was Mr Tambuwal’s deputy until Mr Tambuwal dumped the All Progressives Congress to join his old PDP, in order to run for the presidential election. Mr Aliyu resigned and became the candidate of the APC to run against his former boss.

Mr Wamakko was Mr Tambuwal’s predecessor, who eased Mr Tambuwal’s path to become governor in 2015.

According to the Chief Collation/Returning Officer, Prof. Fatima Mukhtar, Mr Tambuwal of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) secured the highest votes of 512, 002, defeating Mr Aliyu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who polled 511, 660 votes.

“PDP candidate, Aminu Tambuwal having scored the highest votes in the election, is hereby declared winner and returned elected according to law,” Ms Mukhtar said.

Ms Mukhtar, who is the Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Dutse, Jigawa State, said the votes were tallied along with previous ones recorded after the March 9 election.

The election then was declared inconclusive because the vote difference between Mr Tambuwal and his challenger was lower than the cancelled votes.

The total number of registered voters was 1, 887, 767 while 1, 083, 413 voters were accredited.

Total number of valid votes was 1,036,332 and the total number of rejected votes was 31, 662. The number of total votes cast was 1, 067, 994, Mukhtar said.

According to her, during the re-run election, PDP’s Tambuwal polled 22, 444 votes while APC’s Aliyu scored 25, 515 in the 135 polling units where supplementary elections were conduced.

She further explained that 49 candidates from other participating parties shared the remaining votes cast.

However, the APC agent at the collation centre, Maigari Dingyadi, raised the complaints the party made to INEC earlier about the malfunctioning card reader at a polling unit in Tambuwal.

Mr Dingyadi added that election was repeated at the polling unit after lawful election was conducted on March 9 election.

The PDP agent, Umar Bature, dismissed the objections on the ground that the collation centre was not the right place to lodge the complaint.

Prof. Mukhtar noted the complaint and said that it would be reflected in the final report.

NAN