INEC Declares PDP’s Mutawalle As Zamfara Governor-elect

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Saturday, declared Bello Mutawalle of the Peoples Democratic party as the governor-elect of Zamfara State.

The declaration came after Supreme Court Friday nullified the elections of all the candidates of the All Progressives Congress in Zamfara State in the 2019 general elections.

The five-man panel led by the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad, the apex court declared the first runners-up in the 2019 general elections in the state as the winners of all the posts earlier declared to have been won by the APC and its candidates.

The apex court, in its verdict, upheld the judgment of the Sokoto Division of the Court of Appeal to the effect that the APC did not conduct any valid primary election and as such had no candidates for any of the elections in the state.

The court said the votes polled by the APC candidates in the elections as wasted, adding that the party and the candidates with the second highest votes and the spread in the various elections were the valid winners.

With the judgment, the APC has lost the governorship, national and state Assemblies elections conducted in Zamfara State to the opposition PDP.

Two factions of the party, led by Senator Kabiru Marafa and Governor Abdulaziz Yari, respectively, had locked horns in a supremacy battle over who leads the party in the state. The APC was unable to conduct valid primary elections in the state due to their irreconcilable differences.