By AMEH GEORGE, Abuja
Anambra State gubernatorial election which conducted last Saturday has been scored high by Honourable Jim Okolo, an international election observer under the auspices of Nouvel Perspective International, a UN-accredited election observation organisation.
Okolo, who also doubles as it’s National Coordinator said the election satisfied all electoral indices based on international best practices.
He stated this in an interview with AljazirahNigeria correspondent at Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Headquarters, Awka, on Sunday shortly after the
Returning Officer for the election and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin, Prof. Edoba Omoregie, declared Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo, the incumbent governor of the state and candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, as the winner of the election.
Omoregie, a Professor of Constitutional Law and Governance, said Soludo having satisfied all electoral requirements, having won in more than two-thirds of the local government areas across the state was the winner of the election.
Okolo, commended the conduct of the exercise, noting that the process met global democratic standards.
“From all our team observed while moving around the state on Saturday up till now, it has been a very fulfilling experience for us as observers.
“Everything has been conducted in line with international best practices.
“Having monitored elections across several countries, including the United States, which was a high-level exercise, we can conveniently state that everything here was as it should be — peacefully conducted, peacefully collated, peacefully announced, and peacefully accepted. So, we are very glad about this”, he said.
Soludo polled 422,664 votes in the election to emerge the winner, while his closest rival, Nicholas Ukachukwu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, scored 99,445 votes to place second.
Paul Chukwuma of the Young Progressives Party came third with 37,753 votes, while George Moghalu of the Labour Party scored 10,576 votes. John Nwosu, candidate of the coalition-backed African Democratic Congress, secured 8,208 votes while the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party got only 1,401 votes.
