Fides Media Living the Faith
By Ifeanyi Ndukwe
After a duly contested gubernatorial and state assembly polls, Prof. Mrs Nnenna Oti, the Vice Chancellor of Federal University of Technology, Owerri, (FUTO) who is also the Returning Officer for the Abia polls, made good her promise not to be compromised and declared the candidate of Labour Party, LP, Alex Otti, as the Governor-elect of beleaguered Abia State.
This came after she complained of pressures to have her manipulate the remaining results from Obingwa LGA of Abia State in favour of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP candidate. The collation had to be moved to Abuja eventually.
The result as announced by her had Alex Otti emerging winner with a total vote of 175, 467, ahead of his closest rival from PDP who polled 88, 529 votes out of the 18 political party candidates that ran for the election.
The scores of other parties are: Accord Party, 1,058 votes; Action Alliance, 474 votes; AAC, 298 votes; ADC, 2,529 votes; ADP, 601 votes; APC, 24,091 votes, and APGA, 18,119′
In other results, APN scored 572 votes; APP got 11,728; NNPP scored 2,068 votes; PRP scored 168 votes; SDP scored 773 votes; YPP scored 28,972; while ZLP scored 1,011 votes respectively.
Prof Mrs Oti announced the Labour party candidate,Alex Otti as the winner of the gubernatorial polls having met all set guidelines of the electoral laws.
Prof Mrs Oti who hails from Afikpo had earlier directed the REC officer in charge of Obingwa LGA to ensure free and fair elections. She emphasized the principles of democracy, reiterating that the INEC chairman directed to her to abide by all INEC guidelines.
She had in the heat of pressures on her to manipulate the results said, ‘The mother in me and the pastor in me will not allow me do certain things. I resolve to stand by the people’s mandate for a change of narrative.’
Meanwhile the winner of the election, Alex Otti, has promised Abia people of redemption and extended a hand of fellowship to his opponents whom he praised for putting up a good fight.
Despite the potentials of Abia State which is the industrial hub of Nigeria, successive governors had over 24 years failed to take the state higher. Expectations are that Otti will break what many now refer to as the curse of leadership in Abia. PDP has ruled Abia for twenty-four years.