INEC Declares Kano Election Inconclusive

By Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Monday night declared Saturday’s governorship election held in Kano State inconclusive.

The election was declared inconclusive by the State Returning Officer Prof B. B. Shehu the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Birnin Kebbi.

Abba Kabir Yusuf, the Peoples Democratic Party candidate had more votes than the incumbent state governor Dr Abdullahi Ganduje with a slim margin of 26,655 votes.Yusuf polled 1,014,474 votes, while Ganduje got 987,810.

With 2,211,520 accredited voters, 172 polling units were cancelled making a total of 100,873 votes cancelled and 49,761 rejected votes.

IBEC noted that with the very slim margin between the two parties and very high cancelled votes, it could not declare PDP winner of the contest and so the cancelled units will be reviewed by the INEC.

The collation had to be suspended at about 1:30 am on Monday due to the delay in submitting the Nasarawa local government area result to the collation center at the INEC headquarters.

It was later announced that hoodlums had attacked the local government collation center at Nasarawa, disrupted the process and carted away with the result of Gama ward.

INEC was able to regenerate the results of 10 out of the 11 local governments but the Gama result was cancelled due to the circumstances surrounding the loss of the result sheet by the local government returning officer Prof Khaleel Abdulsalam of Bayero University Kano.