By Yemi Adeleye/Augusta Uchediunor
#TrackNigeria: Mr Babajide Sanwo-olu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State has emerged winner of the Saturday’s Governorship election in the state, beating Jimi Agbaje of the Peoples Democratic Party with 533,304 votes.
For Agbaje, the margin of loss was higher than what he recorded in 2015, when he lost to outgoing Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. He then polled 659,738 votes to Ambode’s 812,394
Prof. Eyitope Ogunbodede, Vice Chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University and State Returning Officer for Lagos governorship election, said that Sanwo-olu polled 739, 445 votes to defeat Agbaje who scored 206, 141 votes.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that local government areas returning officers presented the results one after the other as they arrived at the collation centre before they were accepted by Ogunbodede.
Sanwo-olu won in all the local government results declared by INEC at the end of the exercise under the monitoring of party agents and security agencies.
Ogunbodede declared Sanwo-Olu the winner at the end of the collation at exactly 8:40 p.m.
Lagos has 6,505,512 registered voters. However, only 1,006, 074 voters were accredited. The number of valid votes was 977, 476, rejected votes 21,239 and the total votes cast 998, 715.
Accord Party polled 4, 122 votes, YPP 1,604; AAC, 1078; AD 3,370; ADC 3,544; ADP, 4780 and APA 1,906 votes. DPP had 555 votes; MPN 769 votes; NCP 712 votes; NPC 1,886 votes, PPA 548 votes, PPC 617, APDA 642, ACD 917 and ABP 511 votes.
Other fringe political parties that participated in the poll got fewer than 500 votes each.
Thirty one representatives of various political parties took turns to sign Form EC8D presented by the returning officers.
Mr Tajudeen Agoro, the PDP agent at the collation centre complained about what he called the high rate of cancelled votes and urged INEC to explain why there were cases of over voting.
Agoro said that electronic voting had become imperative in the country, saying the card reader should not only be for accreditation but also voting.
Mr Ademola Seriki, the APC agent, who complained about protracted collation of elections’ result and suggested shortening the process through proper deployment of technology.
Seriki also suggested the reduction of political parties. He said that the country is ripe for electronic voting.
“We need to find a way to engage ourselves in a better means of exercising of civil responsibility,” he said.
Mr Tunji Bello, the Secretary to the Lagos State Government described the voting process as fair.
“If we look at the percentage of voters compared to the total number of registered voters, it is nothing to write home about,” he said (NAN)
