Elections: Collation Suspended In Kano After Result Sheet Of Pending LG Is Torn

Elections: Collation suspended in Kano after result sheet of pending LG is torn

March 11, 2019 Sani Tukur

The collation of results at the Kano State collation centre has been suspended by the state’s collation officer, Bello Shehu.

The
decision follows the disruption of collation of the result from
Nasarawa Local Government Area, the only local government whose result
was yet to be announced.

The state Resident Electoral
Commissioner (REC), Riskuwa Shehu, who briefed journalists, observers
and party representatives at the State INEC office early on Monday said
suspected thugs invaded the local government collation centre and
disrupted the process.

“As we were waiting to reconvene with the
intention to continue with the collation, we heard a disturbing report
that just as they were about to conclude, results collation in Nasarawa
local government were disrupted and the result sheet torn away and there
was a lot of commotion and the police had to rescue some people.

“As
it is now, we don’t have the result and even the E. O. (Electoral
Officer), had to be… Luckily, nothing happened to him. He was saved from
the crisis

“But the intention of the commission is that we
are going to refer to our primary and secondary data of results that
were collated from the polling units as well as the ward level.

“When
we get the results in the presence of all the representatives of
political parties, we will regenerate the results and we will confirm
those that are acceptable within our laws and guidelines and those that
have to be cancelled because the card readers will have to be referred
to as well.

“Based on that, we will have genuine results and we will complete the collation for the state governorship election,” he said.

Declaring A Winner

The
state collation officer, Mr Shehu, a professor, had earlier said that
his team has been looking at the cancellation of votes which he said is
“quite a large number.”

Mr Shehu said they are still trying to “segregate and get as much that is zero votes against cancellations.”

He
said, “It is when we get all this that we will be able to put the
results together and declare, looking at the margin of win and be able
to declare if there is a winner.”

Speaking on the matter, the
Kano INEC REC said based on the regulations of the commission, it is
clear that “where manual voting was done, it is not about cancellation
of the votes; it is about scoring zero.”

He said the commission
will now segregate all the cancellations made from all local government
areas as compiled and presented and then isolate “those that are not
genuine cancellations which have been recorded as zero and those that
actually should have been cancelled based on our guidelines will be
cancelled and then the collation officer will continue with his job.”

No
time has been fixed to reconvene and conclude the collation but the
collation officer said all concerned will be communicated whenever the
results from Nasarawa are ready.

Results from 43 of Kano’s 44
local governments had been announced and the PDP candidate, Abba Yusuf,
was leading the incumbent governor Abdullahi Ganduje of the All
Progressives Congress (APC).

While the PDP candidate has so far scored 960,004 votes, Mr Ganduje of the APC has 953,522 votes.

Source:- Premiumtimesng