The Ibadan North East/South East Federal Constituency Election held on Saturday was declared inconclusive by the Returning Officer, Dr Akanni Lawanson.
The Nigerian Tribune reports that the Returning Officer, Lawanson gave the reason at Mapo Hall, Ibadan, on Monday afternoon.
Lawanson explained that he could not declare winner of the election because the number of collected Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) in some units where elections were not held or cancelled exceeded the margin between the two leading candidates.
While not disclosing the exact figures, Lawanson said the margin between the two was about 650 votes while the PVCs in question were in excess of 1,200.
He said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may have to arrange elections in the contentious units bearing in mind the margin of lead and number of potential eligible voters.
He said: “In the last few days, we have gone through the stages of collation. The two local government results were submitted to me and based on what was submitted, I clarified the content of what was submitted with the agent in each of those LGA.
“Naturally, the provision of the law allows only one agent to be at the collation centre. I bent to allow for two of them to be there so they can speak as a witness to the results submitted in each of the local governments.
“I went through all the results and they all agreed that the results submitted to me were okay. We compiled it and based on that, we have the final score.
“The condition is that I compare the information and invoke margin of lead concept in terms of considering the instances where either elections were not held or there was cancellation.
“The number of PVCs where elections were cancelled or not held should be taken into consideration and be compared with the margin of lead.
“When the margin of lead is in excess of the summation of the PVCs collected from those poling booths where election were not held or cancelled
“Then I can proceed to enter the result in EC8e2 and make declaration.
“But where the number of PVCs collected exceeds the lead or difference between the two leading candidates, then I have no authority to go further because it is expected that INEC will arrange for future election in those units and then add it to the existing scores that they do have to know who they will declared in the future.
“The situation is I cannot proceed to make declaration.”
Some candidates in the election are Abass Adigun (Peoples Democratic Party), Dapo Lam-Adesina (All Progressives Congress), Ajaja Adebukola (Accord), and Deji Aboderin (Social Democratic Party), Ibrahim Ajiboye (New Nigerian People’s Party).
