Following Saturday’s governorship elections in Imo, Kogi, and Bayelsa states, indications surfaced that Bayelsa State’s Douye Diri and Imo State’s Hope Uzodimma were in an early lead as results were collated.
In Bayelsa State, Diri is the Peoples Democratic Party candidate for re-election, while Uzodimma is the All Progressives Congress candidate for re-election.
However, in Kogi State, our correspondents who covered the poll and were monitoring the results collation, which was still happening as of press time, learned that the race was close between Usman Ododo of the APC and Muri Ajaka of the Social Democratic Party. Dino Melaye, the PDP candidate, is also a significant contender in the election.
In addition to our correspondents’ observations in the states, a compilation of some of the results released by Sunday PUNCH on the INEC Result Viewing portal revealed the parties’ early performance.
In Bayelsa State, for example, the computation of votes in 131 random polling units throughout different local government areas revealed that PDP’s Diri had already received 13, 396 votes, while APC’s Timipre Sylva had received 4,802 votes.
In Imo State, our correspondents calculated that the APC’s Uzodinma received 22,113 votes in 90 polling units spanning different local government areas, while the PDP’s Samuel Anyanwu and the Labour Party’s Senator Athan Achonu received 1,452 and 1,658 votes, respectively.
In Kogi State, where the election is thought to be a three-horse race, some of our correspondents calculated that APC’s Adodo received 21,047 votes, followed by SDP’s Ajaka with 7,324 votes and PDP’s Melaye with 2,529 votes from 149 polling units spread across five local government areas. Meanwhile, Ajaka was discovered to have received a large number of votes in his home state of Kogi East.
As of 11:03 p.m., the IReV portal stated that 85.29 percent of the results had been uploaded in Bayelsa State, with 1,914 polling unit results uploaded out of a total of 2,242 polling units.
As of 11:18 p.m., the portal indicated that 4,287 polling units, or 90.1 percent of the total 4,758 polling units, had been uploaded for Imo State.
As of 11:20 p.m., the portal indicated that 3,064 polling units, or 87.34 percent, of the 3,508 polling units in Kogi State had been uploaded.