Barring any major unexpected development, the gubernatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen. Bala Mohammed, is all but certain to be the next governor of Bauchi state. He will unseat the incumbent Governor Mohammed Abubakar of the All Progressive Congress (APC) after increasing the margin of his lead in the March 23 re-run, where he won 6,376 votes as against 5,117 votes obtained by Governor Abubakar in 36 polling units across 15 local government areas of the State.
Meanwhile, a Federal High Court in Abuja has dismissed a suit challenging the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to resume collation of results in Bauchi governorship election. Incumbent Governor Mohammed Abubakar, seeking re-election under the All Progressives Congress (APC), had challenged INEC’s decision to reverse itself and resume collation of the governorship result in the Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area after the March 9 elections were declared inconclusive.
The outcome of the election in 19 out of the 20 LGAs in the state, earlier conducted on March 9, indicated that Mohammed polled 469,512 votes while Abubakar scored 465, 453 votes before Tafawa Balewa local government area was declared inconclusive. With the release of the re-run election result, the total votes scored by Mohammed increased to 475,888 votes, while that of Abubakar rose to 470, 570 votes; a difference of 5,318 votes. In the rerun election, there were 21,737 registered voters with 12,109 accredited voters. But the total votes cast was 11, 971 while 403 were rejected.
Result of the re-run was announced in Bauchi on Sunday by the governorship election Returning Officer, Prof. Mohammed Kyari, Vice Chancellor of Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola. Prof. Kyari however said he was not in a position to make any pronouncement regarding the overall winner of the governorship election in the state due to the suit before a Federal High Court, Abuja over the collation of results in Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area.
With the conclusion of the supplementary elections; and with the court having dismissed the suit filed by Governor Abubakar, INEC can now proceed with the collation of results of Tafawa Balewa LGA, which is all certain to determine Sen. Mohammed as the governor-elect of Bauchi state.