The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Adamawa State election, Hon Umaru Fintiri, has said that he regards as victory postponed the declaration of the election as inconclusive and the subsequent decision to conduct a rerun in certain places.
Fintiri had attained the feat of being the first leading candidate by end of collation Monday morning when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) pronounced the election which held on Saturday as inconclusive because the margin of lead between the two leasing candidates was smaller than the number of cancelled votes.
Fintiri had polled a total of 367,471 votes to emerge the first leading candidate, and was followed by Governor Mohammed Jibrilla Bindow of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who received 334,995 votes.
Explaining how he arrived at declaring the election inconclusive, the state returning officer, Prof Andrew Haruna, had said the margin of lead between the leading candidates, 32,467; was lower than the number of cancelled votes; being 40,948 in 44 polling units.
Prof Andrew said election would be held in the affected units to address the vote cancellation anomaly.
Umaru Fintiri who spoke to newsmen in Yola on the development Monday, asserted that his name would eventually be announced as winner. He said, “I’m very hopeful of victory. Adamawa is my constituency and I have been voted across the length and breadth of the state. If INEC, for reason of its own cancellation of results, has opted for supplementary election, we are ready for it.”
Fintiri’s optimism may have come from the widespread view that the LGAs where elections were cancelled in some units, namely Madagali (3 polling units), Michika (5 PUs), Mubi North (3), Hong (4), Song (4), Toungo (3), Demsa (4), Numan (6), Lamurde (3) and Guyuk (3) are mostly ‘PDP LGAs.’
He urged for calm among his supporters, saying, “I enjoin Adamawa people to be calm and wait for the rerun in the places they have identified. Already we are coasting home to victory and we will get there.”
He added that despite the turn of events regarding the election, he regarded its conduct as having been generally credible. “I am satisfied with the electoral process. It was credible and transparently so in most places,” he said.
