FIC Report (Abia State) – The Independent National Electoral Commission has declared the Labour Party’s Candidate, Dr. Alex Otti as the Winner of the March 18th Governorship election in Abia State.
The State Returning Officer, Prof. Nnenna Otti while announcing the result noted that the Labour Party polled a total of 175,467 against his closet rival ,the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, who came second with 88,529.
The Young Progressives Party YPP came third with 28,972 while the All Progressives Congress polled a total of 24,091 to emerge fourth.
Recall that the electoral umpire had suspended the collation of results from the incumbent Governor Onesie Ikpeazu’s
Obingwa Local Government Area for review following reports of malpractice from the LGA and disruption of the exercise by Thugs from Obingwa on Sunday as they held the Officials hostage.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has decided to announce the already electronically-transmitted votes in the Abia State governorship election.
The Commission took the decision Wednesday after a “high-level strategic meeting” of its Legal Team and Election Management Committee.
The Commission decided on the following according to a statement it released after the meeting:
That all the manually collated votes from Obingwa Local Government Area be disregarded.
That it will stick with the “number of accredited voters” in the Local Government.
That the votes already in its iREV Portal be carefully collated.
That the collated votes from iREV be no more than the accredited voters.
And that such will serve as the “duly accepted” result of the 18 March Governorship election.
INEC also directed the Returning Officer for the Abia State governorship election, Prof. Nnenna Otti, to immediately announce the result from Obingwa, add it up with those of the 16 local governments previously announced, and declare a winner.
The Labour Party’s Alex Otti was in the lead before the suspension. He had polled 171,747 votes from the other 16 local governments to his closest rival, the People’s Democratic Party’s Okechukwu Ahiwe who had 79,477 votes.
The PDP, however, claimed it had more than 100,000 votes from Oibngwa despite INEC accrediting only 26,884 on BVAS.
Meanwhile, the result was announced in the absence of PDP Party agents as they didn’t have their way to manipulate the figures after many accusations against the Returning Officer.
There was wild jubilation and excitement in the whole of Abia State especially in the State Capital, Umuahia and the commercial nerve centre, Aba.
