Three resident electoral commissioners, in addition to three national commissioners, have been deployed to Abia for Saturday’s governorship and state assembly re-run elections.
The elections will take place in nine local government areas of the state.
INEC Head of Voter Education and Publicity Department, Mr Edwin Enabor, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) over the phone in Umuahia on Friday that the commission was set for the re-run.
Enabor said that the materials for the polls had been distributed to the INEC offices in the affected local government areas.
Enabor expressed the hope that the exercise would be peaceful and hitch-free.
NAN recalls that INEC declared the governorship election inconclusive, following the cancellation of results from some polling units in nine local government areas of the state.
The Returning Officer, Prof. Benjamin Ozumba, said that no winner was declared because “the margin of lead was not in excess of the total number of registered voters in polling units where elections were cancelled or not held’’.
The margin of lead was 83,053 while the number of registered voters in the cancelled areas stood at 179,224.
The collated results showed that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) polled 248,459 votes while the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) polled 165,406 votes.
Meanwhile, APGA has continued to demand the cancellation of the results from Obingwa, Osisioma and Isialangwa North local government areas, saying that elections in those areas were marred by violence.
