A mild drama played out on Sunday evening at the Awka South Local Government Area office of the Independent National Electoral Commission during the collation of senatorial election results for the Anambra Central Senatorial District.
About two hours after the collation of results from the Dunokofia LGA, the Collation Officer from Awka North, Prof. Greg Obiamalu, came with results of the senatorial election conducted in his region and presented 32 political parties instead of 28 in the customised register at the collation centre.
Immediately Obiamalu announced that he wanted to present the results of 32 parties, the Returning Officer at the centre, Prof. Can Nwankwo, told him that only 28 parties were in the customised register at the collation centre as provided by INEC from the headquarters.
Nwankwo consequently directed his assistant to call out the names of the approved parties, while Obiamalu supplied the number of votes garnered by the identified parties.
The names of the remaining four political parties that were not captured in the customised register were not mentioned and their votes were classified as rejected.
Nwankwo later explained to reporters that “we work with this customised e-register from the headquarters and there’s no way we can add or increase the number of parties in this document to 32 when what has been coming from other LGAs has been 28 as specifically stated in this customised register.”
Meanwhile, the results from the Awka North LGA in the senatorial election in the Anambra Central Senatorial District showed that that the All Progressives Congress polled 973 votes.
The All Progressives Grand Alliance won 6,319 votes, while the Peoples Democratic Party polled 11,177 votes and emerged as the winner in the LGA.
For Dunukofia LGA, still in the same senatorial district, the APC got 1,544; APGA, 8267; and PDP, 10,375. The PDP also won in this LGA.
The Anambra Central Senatorial District has seven LGAs. The results of other LGAs had yet to arrive as at the time of filing this report.