The Niger state collation officer, Mrs Angela Miri, has said elections were cancelled in 105 Polling Units (PUs) with 71,237 registered voters in the affected PUs.
Miri, who is also the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Lokoja, Kogi State, disclosed this Tuesday at the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) National Collation Centre, Abuja.
According to Miri, smart card readers were functioning in some of the polling units due to lack of communication network, especially in PUs which were far from the local government area headquarters.
Also, she attributed the large numbers of void votes to cases of ballot box snatching and cases of violence, which said were brought under control by security agencies in some of the affected areas.
She explained that specific cases leading to the cancellation in each of the PUs had been submitted to the collation centre secretariat.
She announced that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), President Muhammadu Buhari, polled 612,371 votes, followed by the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who scored 218,052 votes.
Miri announced that the candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Yabagi Yusuf, scored 2,582 votes, Akihimmien Isibor of Grassroots Development Party of Nigeria (GDPN) polled 2115 votes; Ibrahim Hassan of the African Peoples Alliance (APA) scored 1,591 votes, and Mailafia Obadia of the Advance Congress of Democrats (ACD) polled 777 votes.
She said a total 2,375,568 voters were registered in the state, while accredited voters were 911,964, valid votes stood at 851,937; rejected votes 45,039 and total vote cast at 896,976. (NAN)
