Rivers State governor and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate for the March 9, 2019 election in Rivers State, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, has been declared winner of the governorship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Announcing the results of the election at the INEC office in Port Harcourt yesterday, the State Returning Officer, Professor Teddy Adias, said Wike garnered 886,264 votes to defeat his closest rival, Biokpomabo Awara of the African Action Congress (AAC) who garnered a total of 173,769 votes.
Adias, who is also the Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Otuoke, Bayelsa State, said results were collated from 21 out of the 23 local government areas of the state.
Adias declared the total margin between the two contestants as 712,405.
He said, “I, this day, confirm again, that I am the collation officer for the elections and that Nyesom Wike of the PDP, having satisfied the requirements of the law, has scored the highest number of votes and is hereby declared winner and returned elected.
“The winner, with the highest votes, scored 886,264 and the second scored 173,859. The margin of lead with these votes stands at 712,405. A total number of registered voters in area where elections did not hold or cancelled stands at 249,324.”
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INEC had earlier announced that elections did not take place in Gokana and Abua/Odual local government areas of the state.
LEADERSHIP observed from the collected results that Wike won in 19 local government areas while Awara, who has the backing of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, won in two local government areas of the state.
Meanwhile, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, has advised PDP governorship candidate and incumbent governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, not to rejoice yet, describing the development as an illegality that will not stand the test of time.
He noted that besides the fact that the results collated by the INEC had been grossly manipulated in favour of Wike, to allegedly justify the huge bribe he had remitted to some senior officers of the commission to help him skew the process to his favour, the unconstitutional suspension of the electoral process in the middle of a lawful exercise was already a ground for the nullification of the process.
Eze, in a statement issued in Port Harcourt yesterday, advised the governor and the senator representing the Rivers
South-East senatorial district in the National Assembly, Senator Magnus Abe, to stop celebrating prematurely as the alleged concocted results in favour of PDP would eventually not stand.
