The collation of results at the Kano State collation centre has been suspended by the state’s collation officer, Bello Shehu.
The decision follows the disruption of collation of the result from Nasarawa Local Government Area, the only local government whose result was yet to be announced.
The state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Riskuwa Shehu, who briefed journalists, observers and party representatives at the State INEC office early on Monday said suspected thugs invaded the local government collation centre and disrupted the process.
“As we were waiting to reconvene with the intention to continue with the collation, we heard a disturbing report that just as they were about to conclude, results collation in Nasarawa local government were disrupted and the result sheet torn and there was a lot of commotion and the police had to rescue some people.
“As it is now, we don’t have the result and even the E. O. (Electoral Officer), had to be… Luckily, nothing happened to him. He was saved from the crisis
“But the intention of the commission is that we are going to refer to our primary and secondary data of results that were collated from the polling units as well as the ward level.
“When we get the results in the presence of all the representatives of political parties, we will regenerate the results and we will confirm those that are acceptable within our laws and guidelines and those that have to be cancelled because the card readers will have to be referred to as well.
“Based on that, we will have genuine results and we will complete the collation for the state governorship election,” he said.
The state collation officer, Mr Shehu, a professor, had earlier said that his team has been looking at the cancellation of votes which he said is “quite a large number.”
Mr Shehu said they are still trying to “segregate and get as much that is zero votes against cancellations.”
He said, “It is when we get all this that we will be able to put the results together and declare, looking at the margin of win and be able to declare if there is a winner.”
Speaking on the matter, the Kano INEC REC said based on the regulations of the commission, it is clear that “where manual voting was done, it is not about cancellation of the votes; it is about scoring zero.”
He said the commission will now segregate all the cancellations made from all local government areas as compiled and presented and then isolate “those that are not genuine cancellations which have been recorded as zero and those that actually should have been cancelled based on our guidelines will be cancelled and then the collation officer will continue with his job.”
No time has been fixed to reconvene and conclude the collation but the collation officer said all concerned will be communicated whenever the results from Nasarawa are ready.
Results from 43 of Kano’s 44 local governments had been announced and the PDP candidate, Abba Yusuf, was leading the incumbent governor Abdullahi Ganduje of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
While the PDP candidate has so far scored 960,004 votes, Mr Ganduje of the APC has 953,522 votes.
