INEC declares Yahaya Bello winner of Kogi governorship election

The candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kogi
State, Yahaya Bello, 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.

See the table below: