The Independent National Electoral Commission on Tuesday fixed Thursday, March 28, 2019 for the Adamawa State governorship supplementary election.
INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Kassim Gaidam, said during a press briefing at the INEC office in Yola that the decision to hold the election on Thursday was based on the court ruling.
He said, “The court this morning vacated the order restraining INEC from going ahead with the conduct of the supplementary election, consequently the commission is now free to go ahead and conclude the election as was done in other states of the federation.
“As a result of this development, the commission at the highest level, in consultation with security agencies, has decided that the supplementary election should hold on Thursday, March 28, 2019. The election will go on as was arranged.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Justice Abdulaaziz Waziri of the state High Court lifted the interlocutory injunction restraining INEC from conducting supplementary governorship election in Adamawa State.
INEC had fixed March 23, 2019 as the date of the rerun after declaring the earlier election inconclusive but the court stopped the conduct of the election in the state pending the determination of a suit before it.
The said suit was filed by Mustapha Shaba, who is the counsel for the governorship candidate of the Movement for the Restoration and Defence of Democracy, Eric Thema.
The suit is challenging the omission of the MRDD logo from the ballot papers used by INEC for the first governorship election in the state on March 9, 2019, stating that it impeded Thema’s chances in the polls.
The Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Hammadu Fintiri, is leading with 32,476 vote margin from the first election after polling 367,471 votes while the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Jubrilla Bindow, had 334,995 votes.
Bindow is seeking re-election. In declaring the election inconclusive, INEC said the margin recorded by the PDP candidate was lower than the 40,998 votes cancelled in 40 polling units scattered over 14 council areas of the state.
