Five Governors In Last Attempt To Retain Seats As Supplementary Elections Hold Today

Five first term governors looking for a second term in office will today face their arch rivals at select but highly dicey polling units in some local government areas of their states to save their seats.

On March 9, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) conducted gubernatorial elections in 29 states.

However, except for Kano, Sokoto, Plateau, Benue, Bauchi, Adamawa and Rivers states, the remaining 22 states have either given a second chance to their governors or elected new ones.

In the seven states mentioned above, all the governors are seeking a second term under the platform of either the APC or PDP.

But, probably because the stakes are high, elections there were declared inconclusive, meaning that the governors must go back to the trenches with those who want to seize the baton from them.

Interests and to a certain extent, desperation to win are not restricted to the concerned governors as both the APC and PDP at the centre are fully involved in supporting their sitting governors and the scheming is already tilted towards 2023.

The APC wants to take over in Sokoto, Benue and Rivers to add to its kitty while the PDP is doing much to retain where it has governors and go ahead to win Kano, Adamawa, Plateau and Bauchi.

These states are very important because of their voting population and no political party would be comfortable without them.

And though INEC said it would conduct supplementary elections in 18 of the 36 states, attention is focused on the states where the fortunes of incumbent governors would be decided by the electorate.

Today, Governors Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano), Aminu Waziri Tambuwal (Sokoto), Samuel Ortom (Benue) and Simon Bako Lalong (Plateau) will most likely know their fates while in Bauchi where there will also be supplementary election in some locations, Governor Mohammed Abubakar would still have to wait a bit longer to know if he would remain in office for the next four years.

In Adamawa, the Movement for the Restoration and Defence of Democracy (MRDD) and its candidate, Rev. Eric Theman, had approached the court seeking outright cancellation of the gubernatorial election, meaning the state has been exempted from today’s contest in respect of the governorship.

Analysts believe that MRDD’s claim in the court has provided a temporary respite for Governor Jibrilla Bindow who is seeking a second term under the platform of the APC but is facing a serious challenge from Umar Fintiri of the PDP.

In Rivers, Wike also received some oxygen to re-strategize following the decision of INEC to continue with collation and re-run in the state on April 13.