Sen. Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed of the All Progressives Congress was declared the victor of the governorship election by the Adamawa State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Yunusa Hudu Ari, in the wee hours of Sunday.
Prior to her announcement, the Independent National Electoral Commission’s official results showed that Binani was in second place behind Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, who had a lead of 31,249 votes. Fintiri defeated Binani with 421, 524 votes, but the state returning officer, Professor Mohammed Mele, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Maiduguri, could not count the votes because the margin of victory was not greater than the number of invalid votes in 69 polling places with a total of 37,016 Permanent Voter Cards collected.
The Adamawa REC, who had abruptly suspended the collation exercise until 11 am on Sunday, sneaked into the collation center at 9:00 am to declare Binani the winner.
This led to a minor drama when the collation of results from the supplementary polls, which were held across the state on Saturday, was resumed.
According to results from 10 councils that have been announced in the supplemental polls so far, it was reported that Fintiri is in the lead.
As of the time this report was filed, results from the 10 councils had been tallied, and Fintiri had increased his lead of 31,249 with victories in the Demsa, Lamurde, Jada, Ganye, Song, Maiha, Hong, and Shelleng councils. By contrast, Binani had only won in the Yola North and Yola South councils out of the 10 council areas that had been announced thus far.
The Adamawa REC is accused of usurping the authority of the Returning Officer, Professor Mohammed Mele, and INEC has asked Nigerians to disregard this action in a tweet on its official Twitter account. INEC then went on to announce the results of the elections that had not yet been totaled and concluded.