The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has announced Governor Hope Uzodimma of the All Progressives Congress, APC, winner of the Saturday, November 11, 2023 governorship election in the state.
Prof Abayomi Fashina, the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti, who was the state Returning Officer declared Uzodimma as the re-elected governor on Sunday morning at around 10 am after more than eight hours of collation of local government results.
Uzodimma, aged 64, had been looking for a re-election in Saturday’s poll. He had cleared all the 27 local government areas in the state.
Uzodimma defeated the major cobtenders: PDP’s Samuel Anyanwu, Labour Party’s, Nneji Achonu and Jack Ogunewe’s of the Action Alliance–AA, and the other 14 other opponents.
The APC candidate had polled 540, 308 votes to beat his closest rivals, PDP’s Anyanwu, who got a total of 71,503 votes and LP’s Achonu who got 64,081 total votes.
The eight-hour marathon collation of results that begun from 2:30am to 8:30am on Sunday was riddled with drama and protest from opposition party agents who protested that the results brought before the state collation centre were at odds with what was uploaded on the Result Viewing Portal of the commission.
Labour Party officials and others had vehemently called for the suspension of the results collation but the returning officer had insisted that the collation should be ended.
Meanwhile, observers have revealed that Saturday’s governorship poll in the Imo state was spoilt by vote buying, voter intimidation, violence and other electoral malpractices with anti graft agencies apprehending party agents loaded with cash.
