Atiku Wins Oyo Presidential Election
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku has been declared winner of the presidential election in Oyo State by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The party candidate has won in 19 local government areas while the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), President Muhammadu Buhari won in 15 local government areas in the state.
The PDP had defeated APC with slim merging of 1, 461 votes.
The Chief Returning Officer and Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin, Prof. Abdulkareem Suleiman Age said Atiku scored 366,690 votes to defeat President Buhari who scored 365,229 votes.
The commission had commenced the announcement of Saturday’s Presidential election results in Oyo State, its headquarters, Agodi, Ibadan as at about 5pm on Sunday with heads of security operatives, and paramilitary and political representatives in attendance.
The presidental election in the state went on peacefully across the state except in some parts of the state where violence erupted.
The results were read out by the chief returning officer for each local government areas.
There was a drama at the state collation centre when officers from Ogbomoso North declared that out of the 58, 000 voters accredited for the election non of the voters returned to vote despite the fact that the exercise has to be simultaneous.
When queried by the Chief Collation Officer, the collation officer, Professor Rasheed Okunola, said it cut across the ten wards in the local government.
According to him, out of the 58,000 accredited voters, 30,000 did not come back to cast their votes.
Also, at the Ogbomoso South Local Government, the number of accredited voters which was 25, 659 voters was over shoot by 20,000.
Even when the collation officer, Prof. Rasheed Okunola argued that the over voting was due to some of the voters who were accredited but did not wait to vote, this did go down well with the Chief Returning Officer, who insisted that things ought to be done properly.
When the result was represented, the university administrator did not hide his feeling on the incident.
The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Barr. Mutiu Agboke who noted that the process was long, said that there was no plan for manipulation but a mistake which could still be corrected at the state collation as it was not peculiar to the state alone.
According to him, the mistake which is not an intent to manipulate can still be rectified at the state level of the collation of results.
The collation of results from the two councils were stepped down.