Sylvanus Viashima, Jalingo
The presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party PDP, Atiku Abubakar, has won the presidential election in Taraba State, beating his closest rival, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress APC, President Muhammadu Buhari, with Forty Nine Thousand, Eight Hundred and Thirty Seven Thousand (49,837) votes.
Atiku won in ten out of the sixteen local government areas in the state with a total of Three Hundred and seventy Four Thousand, Seven Hundred and Forty Three (374,743) votes as against Three Hundred and Twenty four Thousand, Nine Hundred and Six (324,906) votes of the All Progressives Congress APC.
The Collation Officer for the state Prof S. K. Manu of the Modibo Ali University of Technology, Yola thanked the team for dedication to duty and assured that the issues and observations made by the respective persons would be looked into appropriately and addressed while the lessons learnt would be used to better subsequent elections.
While the election in the state was relatively peaceful, there were reported cases of irregularities and several cancellations across several local government areas.
Meanwhile, the candidates of the People’s Democratic Party PDP Sen. Emmanuel Bwacha and Sen. Shuaibu Lay have won the Southern and Northern senatorial seats respectively, while the candidate of the All Progressives Congress APC Senator Yusuf Abubakar Yusuf has won the Central senatorial seat.
In a related development, the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance APGA Mr Danjuma Shidi has retained his seat for the Wukari/Ibi federal constituency, defeating the candidates of the PDP and APC among others.
The returning officer of the People’s Democratic Party Mr Haruna Gbana who spoke to journalists expressed satisfaction with the exercise and the results.
“There are some challenges understandably because Taraba has a very difficult terrain but in the end, I am satisfied with the result. You can see that my party has won clearly and this is just a prelude to a better victory we would be celebrating in the next two weeks.”
However, the returning officer of the APC, Prof Abbas Bashir, said he was not satisfied with the exercise in some areas where the actions of the ad-hoc staff led to the disenfranchisement of some voters and called on the INEC to work hard and improve on the process.