TELL Magazine

Various political parties that participated in Saturday’s governorship election in Delta State have continued to react to the outcome of the poll in which candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Sheriff Oborevwori was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC on Monday.

While the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Labour Party, have outrightly rejected the results, the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, though accused INEC of rigging the party out, nevertheless, congratulated the declared winner.

Oborevwori garnered 360,234 votes to defeat other governorship candidates, including APC’s Senator Ovie Omo-Agege who scored 240, 229 votes, Ken Pela of the LP, who polled 48,047, and Kenneth Gbagi of the Social Democratic Party, (SDP) who scored 4,639 votes.

Rejecting the result, Omo-Agege, candidate of the APC and deputy president of the Senate, described the election as fraudulent and vowed to challenge it in court.

Tony Ezeagwu, Chairman, Labour Party in the state, alleged that the election was characterised by malpractices, especially vote buying and intimidation.

“Ezeagwu insisted that “The result is not credible. Since the outcome of the presidential election, we have been complaining over vote buying and intimidation. If the result of the election frauds are victory, then democracy will be in doubt in the next four years”

But the NNPP, in a statement on Monday personally signed by its governorship candidate, Dr. Goodnews Agbi, said although his supporters were prevented from exercising their civic responsibility, he had come to accept the outcome of the election.

While therefore congratulating Oborevwori, he stated that he had accepted the wish and decision of the people of the state who spoke loudly through the ballot on Saturday March 18.

Agbi said “I have reviewed the outcome of 2023 governorship election held on Saturday March 18 in Delta State. From our reviews, scores of our supporters were disenfranchised during the election across the 25 local government councils. INEC rigged NNPP out abinitio”.