Alex Otti, Abia State Governor-Elect and Dr Paul Mbah, Enugu State Governor-Elect
The Independent National Electoral Commission has concluded the collation of the governorship results for Abia State and Enugu state and declared, former banker Alex Otti of the Labour Party, LP as governor-elect in Abia State while Dr. Peter Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has won the election in Enugu State.
The Commission had suspended collation of results in the two states following violence and the abduction of its officers.
Announcing the details of the results in Enugu, the Returning Officer of INEC, Professor Maduebibisi Ofo Iwe said Mbah scored 160,895 votes to defeat his closest rival, Chijioke Edeoga of the Labour Party (LP), who polled 157,552 votes.
Frank Nweke Jnr of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) scored 17,983 while Chief Uche Nnaji of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 14,575 votes to come a distant third and fourth respectively.
Speaking on the raisons for the suspension of collation, Prof Iwe said: “We have come back to conclude the collation of results. We received some petitions particularly against Nsukka and Nkanu East LGAs and these things were taken to Abuja for resolution.
“The petition against Nsukka was overruled. That means whatever anybody had against Nsukka was not substantiated.
“Before the review, we had 30,350 votes for PDP from Nkanu East LGA. But after the review, PDP’s votes now reduced to 16,956.
“For LP, the votes they had on Monday was 1855 and after the review, it increased to 1864”.
Based on the fact that the petition against Nkanu East was sustained, Iwe invited the collation officer for Nkanu East LGA to call out the results after the review.
However, LP’s collation agent, Eugene Edeoga, objected to the continuation, saying that it was against the provisions of the Electoral Act to still release results from a particular unit after it had been discovered to have been over-voting.
His objections were overruled by Prof Iwe, who claimed that he was under authority “to do what I’m doing here this evening”.
In Abia, where earlier in the day the results earlier announced Otti of the LP polled a total of 175, 467 votes defeat his closest rival, Chief Okey Ahiwe of the ruling PDP who scored 88,529 votes. Enyinnaya Nwafor of the Young Peoples Party, YPP, came third with 28,972 votes.
Returning Officer and Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology Owerri, FUTO, Professor Nnenna Oti, subsequently declared Otti the Governor-elect having polled the highest number of votes and satisfied all necessary conditions.
