Sen. Akume losses senate 4th bid

Sen. George Akume of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has lost his fourth time bid to win the Benue North West Senatorial seat to Rep. Orker Jev.

Our correspondent reports that the poll result, which was held on Feb. 23, was not announced by INEC owing to myriad of complaints bothering on its integrity.
Akume has had represented the senatorial district from 2007 to 2019.

Announcing the results on Tuesday in Makurdi, the Returning Officer for the election, Prof. Nicodemus Agbulu, said Jev polled 157,726 votes to beat rival Akume of the APC, who polled 115,422 votes.

Agbulu said the number of registered voters was 867,302 while accredited voters were 293,399.

He said the total number of valid votes was 278,997, rejected ballots were 8,031 while total votes cast were 287,028.
Agbulu blamed the delay in the announcement of the result on the inability of the ad-hoc and collation officers to turn in results on time.
The returning officer also announced that 63 polling units had been cancelled across the 11 council wards in Guma, Makurdi and Buruku.
NAN reports that nine political parties contested the elections.