Yola high court stops Adamawa from participating in supplementary election after Inec mix-up

SUPPLEMENTARY elections will not hold in Adamawa State on March 23 after a Yola high court barred the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) from going ahead with the exercise because it omitted the names of one of the candidates from the ballot sheet.

As is the case with five other states where the recent gubernatorial elections were inconclusive, Inec had planned to hold supplementary elections in Adamawa State on March 23. However, this will now not happen, as Reverend Eric Theman, the governorship candidate of the Movement for the Restoration and Defence of Democracy (MRRD), has got an injunction preventing the exercise from going ahead.

At the state high court in Yola, Justice Abdulaziz Waziri, granted an interim injunction stopping Inec from conducting the supplementary polls in the 44 polling units where voting was cancelled during the March 9 governorship election. Reverend Theman, had filed for the injunction based on the non-inclusion of his party logo on the ballot papers for the governorship election.

Inec had declared the elections inconclusive after it collated results from 21 local government areas of the state and found that the margin of lead between the two leading parties, was lower than the number of registered voters in polling units where voting was cancelled. After the collation of results, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was leading with 367,471 votes, trailed by the All Progressives Congress (APC), which had 334,995 votes.

This gave a difference of 32,467, which is less than the 40,948 registered voters in the 44 polling units where voting was cancelled. Incumbent Governor Mohammed Jibrilla is the APC candidate, while Umaru Fintiri is standing for the PDP.