The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in Anambra, Valentine Ozigbo, on Monday, said the state’s governorship election is not remained “winnable” for him.
Ozigbo, who stated this at a news conference in Awka, expressed the hope that the PDP would close the gap if electoral officials and materials were effectively deployed on time for the supplementary election slated for Tuesday in the Ihiala local government area of the state.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday night, suspended the collation of results in the Anambra election after releasing results of 20 out of the 21 LGAs, except Ihiala.
In the results announced by INEC, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) candidate, Prof. Charles Soludo, got 103,946 votes, while Ozigbo scored 51,322.
Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Young Progressives Party (YPP) candidate, Ifeanyi Ubah, garnered 42,942 and 20,917 votes respectively.
The PDP candidate said the Anambra election would continue beyond Tuesday provided the margin between the two leading candidates was less than the number of registered voters in places where there was proof that elections did not hold.
He stressed that apart from Ihiala, which had more than 148,000 registered voters, there were places which the party had proven there was no election with over 100,000 registered voters.
According to him, Ihiala alone could upturn the result with the ongoing awareness in the area.
Ozigbo urged INEC to ensure that voters did not encounter the challenges they had on Saturday by deploying functional machines to the area.
He said: “I want to assure the good people of Anambra that the election is not over, it is still winnable for us, the PDP.
“The over 248,000 votes in Ihiala tomorrow and other places is enough to change the situation, I call on our people to remain hopeful and make it possible by coming out to vote.
“There was no low turnout of voters on Saturday, what we had was technology-induced challenges which denied many people the opportunity to vote.
“While we commend INEC for their effort to improve the electoral process with technology, we want to acknowledge the imperfection that marred the exercise. It was a big experiment we did not deserve.”
