Yahaya Bello, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kogi State has been re-elected as the governor of the state.
Governor Bello was returned elected on Monday by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), having scored the highest number of votes in the keenly contested poll.
The Returning Officer for the election and Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Professor Ibrahim Umar, made the declaration at the INEC office in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.
The APC candidate polled a total of 406,222 votes to beat his closest rival, Mr Musa Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored 189,704 votes.
On her part, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Natasha Akpoti, garnered a total of 9,482 votes.
Professor Umar declared the winner following the collation of results from all 21 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state, an exercise which lasted more than 24 hours.
After several hours of collating the results from 19 LGAs, Professor Umar had announced on Sunday night that the exercise would continue on Monday morning.
Of the results collated before the exercise was suspended, it was a close battle between Bello who won 10 LGAs and Wada who claimed nine LGAs while Natasha had yet to win any local government.
At the resumption of the exercise, the results of the remaining two local governments – Ibaji and Lokoja – were collated, paving the way for the declaration of the winner of the election.
Announcing the final results of the election, the returning officer noted that a total of 1,646,350 people registered for the election while 636,202 were accredited to vote.
He explained that the margin between the winner of the election and the runner-up was 216,518 votes.
It was a tough day in Kogi and Bayelsa States where INEC conducted elections on Saturday last week as the exercise recorded loss of lives, attack on polling units by suspected thugs, and ballot box snatching among other unfortunate incidents.
