Fintiri emerges winner of Adamawa supplementary governorship election

•Adamawa has resisted enemies of democracy – Atiku

From Umar Dan Kano, Yola

The Adamawa state Governor, Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri of the Peoples Democratic Party,PDP has been declared winner of the 2023 governorship election in the state.
Announcing the election results at the INEC Collation Centre in Yola Tuesday, the returning officer of the election, Professor Mohammed Mele declared that Governor Fintiri scored the highest votes cast of 430,861 and is returned elected to defeat his closest opponent in the contest, Senator Aishatu Dahiru Binani of the All Progressives Congress, APC who polled 398,788 votes .
Professor Mele announced that the total number of registered voters in the election was 2,196,56 while accredited voters stood at 876,387 .
He explained further that number of rejected votes was 15,287 as number of votes cast was 869,106 respectively.
Our Correspondent in Yola reported that the collation of results for the supplementary election resumed at about 3pm iwith Mr. Festus Okeye, the INEC commissioner of information and other officials sent from Abuja supervised the electoral process to the end .
It could be recalled that the governorship election was conducted on the 18th Febuary and was declared inconclusive. It was rescheduled for 15th April and couldn’t be completed until this supplementary election yesterday after the INEC suspended the former Resident Electoral Commissioner, Barrister Hudu Yunusa Ari who allegedly compromised the process.
In his Acceptance speech, Governor Fintiri thanked Adamawa electorate for believing in his style of leadership promising to do more in his urban renewal drive with a view to touching many more areas of human endeavours as well as infrastructural development
In a quick reaction, Presidential candidate of the PDP in the February 25 poll, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar sent congratulatory message to Fintiri via his Twitter handle which was distributed by his Media Office:
“Congratulations, Gov Ahmadu Fintiri, on your deserved reelection as governor of Adamawa State. Thank you to the people of Adamawa and men and women of goodwill for staying the course in resisting coupists and enemies of democracy from having their way. The lesson from this exercise and others is the need for Nigerians to be vigilant and never give in to anti-democratic forces whose objective is to snatch, run with and undermine the mandate of the people as freely expressed in their votes. By the way, it is not yet uhuru as we still have one more major mandate to reclaim, and together as ONE, we shall accomplish the task for the good of our country and its people.”