The Independent National Electoral Commission has discontinued the collation of the supplementary governorship election in Kano State. Results from 21 local government councils have been collated already and the incumbent Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of the All Progressives Congress is shrinking the 26,655 votes’ gap between him and his challenger, Abba Kabir-Yusuf of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Riskuwa Shehu, announced the suspension of the collation early on Sunday citing the invasion of Nasarawa Local government collation centre by thugs as the reason for the action taken.
Briefing journalists, observers and party representatives at the State INEC office, Shehu said: “As we were waiting to reconvene with the intention to continue with the collation, we heard a disturbing report that just as they were about to conclude, results collation in Nasarawa local government were disrupted and the result sheet is torn away and there was a lot of commotion and the police had to rescue some people.
“As it is now, we don’t have the result and even the E. O. (Electoral Officer) had to be rescued. Luckily, nothing happened to him. He was saved from the crisis.
“But the intention of the commission is that we are going to refer to our primary and secondary data of results that were collated from the polling units as well as the ward level.
“When we get the results in the presence of all the representatives of political parties, we will regenerate the results and we will confirm those that are acceptable within our laws and guidelines and those that have to be cancelled because the card readers will have to be referred to as well.
“Based on that, we will have genuine results and we will complete the collation for the state governorship election,” he said.
