By Amos Aar
THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has so far collated results of the March 18, 2023 governorship and state legislative elections in Benue State with Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the lead with a margin of 94,695 against his closet rival, Rt. Hon. Titus Uba, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Results collated from the eleven local governments indicate that Fr. Alia has polled 194,555 while PDP’s Uba has scored 99, 860.
INEC has closed the collation of results and will resume at 5pm Sunday after a 3-hour break.
The winner of the governorship election is likely to be announced later today or tomorrow morning without necessarily conducting election in Kwande LGA where the exercise was postponed yesterday by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Prof. Sam Egwu, on Saturday announced the postponement of the gubernatorial and State Assembly elections in Kwande local government area of Benue State.
Prof. Egwu, said the postponement was due to an error in the printing of the ballot papers for Kwande-West and Kwande-East state constituencies.
According to him, the error did not affect governorship ballot papers and so, he had suggested that the governorship election be conducted but stakeholders in the local government (Kwande) across party lines decided in one accord that both governorship and State Assembly elections be postponed pending when the right ballot papers will be printed by INEC from Abuja.
The REC announced on Sunday at the beginning of the collation of results from 22 local government areas out of 23, that following the outstanding elections in Kwande LGA, INEC may not announce winner of the governorship election today.
Egwu however stated that there is the possibility of announcing the winner today going by INEC’s rules.
He said if at end of the day, the margin between the leading candidate and the runner-up and the number of those who collected PVCs in Kwande local government could not make a difference even if they conduct the election, the winner will be announced.
“The law empowers us to announce,” Egwu explained.
