The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] in Akwa Ibom State, Governor Udom Emmanuel, has been re-elected for a second term in office in the March 9 governorship election conducted in the state.
Emmanuel secured 519,712 votes and won in the 30 local government areas in the governorship results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission, while his closest rival and candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Mr Nsima Ekere, garnered 171,978 and won only in Essien Udim, which is the LGA of the former Senate minority leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio.
Declaring Governor Emmanuel winner of the election at 12.30am on Monday, the state Returning Officer, Prof Faraday Osasere (Vice-Chancellor, University of Benin, Benin, Edo State), said out of the 2,119,727 registered voters in the state, only 720,064 were accredited in the election, while the total vote cast was 712,037.
The governor-elect had defeated the APC candidate in his (Ekere’s) Ikot Abasi LGA.
All other political party agents signed the result sheet with the exception of APC state agent, Mr Sam Akpan, who walked out of the collation centre.
Akpan, however, rejected the results, claiming that they were not a true reflection of the exercise that took place on Saturday.
He called for the cancellation of the result of the governorship election in the state.
