Our reporter/ The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has surprisingly moved the final collation of results for last Saturday’s gubernatorial election in Abia state to Abuja.
Labour Party (LP) Governorship Candidate, Dr Alex Otti, is leading his main challenger, Chief Okey Ahiwe of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), with a wide margin but collation of the results was suspended yesterday by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) following the invasion of the Obingwa collation centre by suspected PDP thugs.
While announcing the immediate suspension of collation of the governorship election results, the Administrative Secretary of INEC, Abia State, Chief Clement Oha, had said in Umuahia that there would be no further collation of results at Obingwa “until INEC Commissioners arrive from Abuja by Tuesday to supervise the collation and take decision on what has to be done after reviewing the situation on ground.”
However, according to various INEC sources, the commission decided not to send its officials from Abuja to Umuahia because of security reasons.
Otti has won a total of 10 out of the 16 Local Government Area results so far declared by INEC. He polled a total of 171,747 votes while Ahiwe scored a total of 79,477 votes after winning five LGAs.
Young Peoples Party (YPP) polled 8,839 to win Osisioma LGA the home of its governorship candidate, Enyinnaya Nwafor.
Reacting to the development, a source close to the Labour party candidate said he is relaxed about the situation.
“He is not worried, the people of Abia spoke with one voice on Saturday and INEC will do the right thing”, he was quoted to have said.
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