Anambra poll: Soludo leading with 50,000+ votes as INEC fixes Tuesday for supplementary election

The people of Anambra State that trooped out last Saturday to vote in the governorship election will have to wait a little longer to know who will be their next governor as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has suspended the collation of results for the governorship poll.

But before the suspension of result collation, candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Professor Charles Soludo, was comfortably leading with over 50,000 votes after results from 20 out of the 21 local government areas were declared on Sunday night by INEC.

The results so far declared show that Soludo has secured 103,946 votes, followed by Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party with less than 55,000 votes.

The third major contender, Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has 42,942 votes.

Returning officer for the election, Florence Obi, announced this midnight on Monday.

According to her, the decision to suspend the collation of results is to give room for a supplementary election in the Ihiala LGA, which has been fixed for November 9, 2021.

Ahmadu Umar, the collation officer for Ihiala LGA, had earlier said there was no election in the entire area.

Citing relevant sections of the constitution, the returning officer said the final collation of results could not be done until the polling units in Ihiala LGA are covered.

“The outstanding result is for Ihiala LGA, where for various reasons, the commission could not deploy materials yesterday. Consequently, based on constitutional considerations and provisions of the Electoral Act, as well as revised regulations and guidelines for the conduct of election issued by the commission, supplementary election is indicated for Ihiala local government area,” she said.

Obi also said, “First, section 179(2) of the constitution provides for a candidate to secure both the highest number of votes cast and 25 percent of the votes cast in at least two-third of the LGAs in the state to be declared the winner of the governorship election. Therefore, it is important to complete the election in Ihiala LGA to make this determination.

“Also, section 179(3) of the constitution provides that a runoff election shall take place if no candidate meets the requirement of subsection 2 of the section. Such a runoff shall be between the candidate with the highest number of votes and one among the remaining candidates who secured a majority of votes in the highest number of LGAs in the state. This further underscores the importance of conducting election in Ihiala LGA so that we shall cover all the LGAs to make the declaration.

“Secondly, section 26 of the Electoral Act envisages the postponement of an election where there is a cogent and verifiable reason to do so, especially threat of breach of the team. One major reason for not deploying for election in Ihiala on Saturday, 6th November, is due to security threats which led to staffing and transportation constraints, among others.

“Finally, clause 47 of the revised regulations and guidelines for the conduct of elections provides that supplementary election shall be conducted when the commission, due to logistical challenges, is unable to deploy on election day.

“Given the foregoing, it becomes imperative to bring Ihiala LGA at par with the other 20 LGAs in this election before we can make a valid declaration or take any further action based on the extant law.

“Therefore, I, professor Florence Banku Obi, in my capacity as returning officer for this election, hereby announce the suspension of the process of collation of results and declaration of a winner until a supplementary election is held in the 326 polling units in the Ihiala LGA of the state.”