Just In: Abia Governorship: INEC announces time for resumption of results’ collation

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has confirmed that the collation of the Abia State governorship election result would resume on Wednesday (today) in the state.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that the commission had, on Monday, ordered the suspension of the collation of governorship results from Obingwa Local Government Area of the state over an alleged attack and invasion of its local government office by suspected thugs in the area.

But the Head of Voter Education and Publicity, Rebecca Jim, on Tuesday, said that the collation would resume on Wednesday by 4:00 p.m. at the State Collation Centre located inside the premises of the INEC office in Umuahia, the state capital, according to a report by Channels Television.

Mrs Jim told the television station that the Returning Officer and Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nnenna Oti, and the State Administrative Secretary, Clement Oha, who were invited to the INEC headquarters Abuja over the controversy surrounding the result from the Obingwa Council Area were on their way back to the state to complete the process.

It is not clear, for now, if the commission changed the submitted results from the area.

Meanwhile, PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported that the Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate in the state, Alex Otti, is leading after the collation of results of Saturday’s governorship election from 16 of 17 local government areas of the state.

There are 17 local government areas in the state.

This newspaper also reported that after the collation of results in the 16 council areas, Mr Otti is leading with 172,246 votes while Okey Ahiwe of the PDP polled a total of 78,628 votes to come a distant second.

The difference in the margin between the LP and the PDP candidates is 93,618 votes.

The result from the Obingwa Council Area is the only remaining result being awaited to declare the winner of the exercise.

The total number of registered voters in Obingwa Local Government Area stands at 157, 390, according to data obtained from INEC.

However, only 154, 966 voters collected their Permanent Voters Cards for the election in the area, the commission’s records show.

In Saturday’s governorship poll in the council area, only a total of 26,845 voters were accredited for the exercise in the area.