The Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC) on Monday announced that supplementary Governorship elections will be held in Adamawa and Kebbi States, five Senatorial Districts, 31 Federal and 58 State Assembly constituencies on April 15,2023.

Mr. Festus Okoye Esq., National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee who disclosed this in a press statement said owing to the competitive nature of the elections, especially for legislative seats, supplementary elections will be held in just a few polling units in some constituencies.

“A comprehensive list of the polling units by State, Local Government, Registration Area, registered voters and PVCs collected will be published on our website on or before Wednesday 29th March 2023,” he said.

The Commission appealed to all political parties, candidates and stakeholders to note the date and locations of the supplementary elections stressing that the earlier accreditation for polling and collation agents, observers and the media still subsists for the supplementary elections.

“The Commission once again urges political parties, candidates and their supporters to see the exercise as an election and not war. They should avoid incendiary statements and negative mobilisation so that the elections can be conducted and concluded as scheduled”, he said.

It will be recalled that 26 State Governorship, 104 Senatorial, 329 Federal and 935 State constituency elections have been concluded and winners declared. The governorship elections in Adamawa and Kebbi states have been declared inconclusive.

The incumbent governor of Adamawa state ,Umaru Fintiri of the PDP scored 421,524 votes in the March 18 election while his closest rival, Senator Aisha Binani of the APC secured 390,275.

But the elections were canceled in several units totaling about 37,000 votes. And since the marging of lead was only 31,000, the commission resolved to hold supplementary elections in the affected units.

INEC, however, announced that the cancelled votes at the election were more than the margin of win between Gov. Fintiri and Senator Binani.

The election in Kebbi state was keenly contested by the two giant political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with the candidate of the All Progressives Congress leading in more local governments as at the time the outcome was declared inconclusive.

The collation and returning officer of the election, Yusuf Sa’idu, a professor at the Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto, said there were cancellations of results in different polling units across Registration Areas (RAs) in 20 of the 21 local government areas of Kebbi State.

Mr Sa’idu said: “We aggregated the total number of collected PVCs in those polling units and it came to a total of 91,829. And when we checked the results, the two leading political parties in this contest, APC and PDP, polled 388,258 and 342,980 votes respectively. When we looked at the difference, it stands at 45,278.”

He noted that they had no option other than to refer to sections 51(2) and (3) of the Electoral Act 2022 for guidance.

INEC, however, announced that the cancelled votes at the election were more than the margin of win between Gov. Fintiri and Senator Binani.