John Adams, Minna
President Muhammadu Buhari has won the presidential election in Niger State, results of which were released in Minna in the early hours of Tuesday, February 26, at about 12:45am.
The final results announced by the returning officer, Professor Angela Freeman Mary, shows that President Buhari polled a total of 612,371 votes, with his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar scoring 218,052.
The President recorded 68 per cent of the total votes cast, with a margin of 394,265 votes.
Buhari won in all 25 local government in the state. The APC party also won all National Assembly elections in the state.
The elections were however marred by a number of irregularities, according to testimonies by various local government returning officers and electoral officers during collation of results at the INEC headquarters in Minna.
The irregularities range from manual voting, following the failure of card readers in almost all the local government areas, except Minna, the state capital, ballot box snatching, harassment of ad hoc INEC staff, and outright vote buying.
One after the other, the returning officers recounted how hoodlums invaded polling units in some local government areas, snatching ballot papers and boxes only to return them hours later, forcing the ad hoc INEC staff to abandon card readers for manual voting.
All these, they said was allowed to take place following a threat to their lives by the alleged hoodlums, as police and other security agents watched helplessly, they said.
About 30,000 votes from across 15 polling units were canceled by various electoral officers in their polling units as a result of these irregularities.
All the complaints were noted by Freeman Mary during the collation of the results.
Details of results in summary:
No of accredited voters – 911,964
No of valid votes – 851,937
No of rejected votes – 45,039
Total votes cast – 896,976
73 political parties contested the Presidential election in the state.