The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Umo Eno has been declared the winner of the March 18 governorship election in Akwa Ibom State.
The Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Returning Officer in the state, Prof. Emmanual Adigio while declaring him winner, stated that Eno polled 354,348 votes to defeat his closest rivals – Bassey Albert of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) who scored 136,262 votes, Akanimo Udofia of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who scored 129,602 votes and Labour Party’s (LP) Uduakobong who got 4,746 votes.
Mr Adigio gave the total number of registered voters in the state as 2,357,418 out of which 657,959 representing about a quarter were accredited for the exercise. He also gave the total valid votes cast as 656,422 out of which 12,342 were rejected votes while 644,080 were valid votes.
In the presidential elections held on 25th February, the candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar won Akwa Ibom state with 214,012 votes, followed by Tinubu of the APC with 160,620 votes and Peter Obi of LP with 132,683 votes.
A total of 555,089 valid votes were reported by INEC to have been cast in the presidential elections.
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur