The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared the incumbent governor of Kano State and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, as winner of the just concluded governorship re-run election in the state.
Declaring the winner of the election, the governorship election Collation Officer in Kano, Prof. Bello Shehu, said that the APC candidate garnered 1,033,695, while that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Abba Kabir scored 1,024,713 votes.
He said that the APC candidate defeated the PDP candidate with 8,982 votes margin and therefore declared Ganduje the winner having satisfied requirements of the law by scoring the highest number of votes.
According to Shehu, the winner was declared after the collation of result from all the affected 28 local government areas where the supplementary elections was conducted on Saturday March 23.
He said Ganduje polled a total of 45,876 while Kabir of the PDP got 10,239 votes during the last Saturday’s supplementary elections in 28 local government areas of the state.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalled that the governorship election was earlier declared inconclusive following the high number of cancellation of votes as a result of violence and overvoting.
According to the collation officer, the total number of votes cancelled during the earlier election which led to the declaration of the poll as inconclusive was beyond the margin between the PDP candidate who was leading with 26,000 votes and that of the APC candidate.
Kabir had 1,014,474 against Ganduje who garnnered 987,819 votes in the March 9 election.
NAN further recalled that the votes cancelled during the March 9 governorship election was 128,572 votes.
Meanwhile, the state’s PDP Chairman, Alhaji Suleiman Rabiu – Bichi, had rejected the entire re-run election, especially that of Gama in Nassarawa Local Government Area.
The PDP Chairman further described the election processes as shameful and called for the immediate cancellation of the exercise.
According to him, the party will not accept the result, therefore refused to sign it.
