UPDATED: INEC declares Ganduje winner of Kano rerun

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared Kano State Governor Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje and the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner of the just- concluded supplementary re-run poll.

Declaring the winner of the election, the Collation Officer for the Governorship election in Kano, Prof. Bello Shehu announced the APC candidate polled 1,033,695 while that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 1,024,713 votes.

He said that the registered voters stood at 5,426,989,accredited voters ,2,268,305,while the valid votes cast is 2,199,535,with rejected votes of 50,861,adding that,the total vote cast is 2,242,396.

He added that the APC candidate defeated his immediate opponent of the PDP with 8,982 votes.

According to Shehu, the winner was declared after the collation of result from all the 28 affected Local Government Areas where the supplementary elections were conducted on Saturday.

He said: “That Abdullahi Umar Ganduje having satisfied the requirement of the law, has scored the highest votes, is hereby declared winner and returned elected.”

He said the governorship election was earlier declared inconclusive following the high number of cancellation of votes as a result of violence and over voting.

According to the collation officer, the total number of votes cancelled during the earlier election, which led to the declaration of the poll as inconclusive, was beyond the margin between the PDP candidate which was leading with 26,000 votes and that of the APC candidate.

The PDP candidate, Abba Kabir Yusuf, was declared to have 1,014,474, against the APC candidate Gov Ganduje who garned 987,819 votes before the supplementary poll.

Votes cancelled during the governorship election stood at 128,572 which the collation officer said the electoral act has it that such election must be declared inconclusive.

The PDP agent, who is also the party chairman, Suleiman Rabiu Bichi frowned at the exercise.

He rejected the entire re-run election process, especially that of Gama in Nassarawa Local Government Area.

The APC Chairman, Abdullahi Abbas, described the election as another land mark victory for the party.