Governor Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State in North-East Nigeria, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in the March 18, 2023 governorship election, has been declared the winner.
Yahaya of the APC received 342,821 votes, defeating Mohammed Jibrin Barde of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who received 233,131 votes.
Ahmed Mailantarki of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) came third with votes 19,861 while Keftin Amuga of the Labour Party (LP) scored 1,753.
Governorship elections were held in 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states on Saturday. The governorship and state assembly elections were held a week later than initially scheduled after a court case forced INEC to move them forward.
Eight of the 36 states — Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi, Osun, and Ondo — have governorship elections “off-season” due to litigations and court judgements.
In alphabetical order, the 28 states where governorship elections were on March 18 are Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara.
Of the 28 states, 11 serving governors including Yahaya sought reelection while 17 outgoing governors are in the final weeks of their constitutional two-term limits of eight years, having been sworn in on May 29, 2015.