From Harry Awurumibe in Awka, Anambra
The three leading political parties in the Anambra State Governorship Election, the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC) have turned their attention to Ihiala Local Government Area where the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has ordered for the conduct of Supplementary Election on Tuesday, November 9, 2021.
The Supplementary Election in Ihiala was due to the electoral umpire’s inability to conduct election in the LGA last Saturday following a spate of security challenges in the area.
The Commission in its wisdom suspended further collation of last Saturday’s election results pending the conduct of the last of the 21 LGAs in Anambra state which has no fewer than 148,407 registered voters.
This large number of voters who are yet to cast their ballots now hold the fate of the APGA candidate, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo
who is leading in 18 out of the 20 LGAs results already declared by INEC as at the time of this report.
Also, politicians being unrepentant optimists, the candidate of PDP, Valentine Ozigbo who is placed a distanced second and APC flagbearer Andy Ubah, placed further in the third place, are praying that Ihiala result favours them on Tuesday.
Although, APGA and Soludo have established a wide lead by garnering a total of 103, 946 votes to PDP and Ozigbo’s 51,322 votes and APC and Ubah 42,492 votes; 6 both candidates as well as the fourth placed Young Progressive Party (YPP) flagbearer Ifeanyi Ubah with 20,917 total votes will be hoping to sweep Ihiala to overtake APGA’s Soludo and be declared winner on Tuesday.
Prompt News reports that the camps of the frontrunners have gone back to the field to reach out to their party members in Ihiala LGA to troop out en masse to vote for their candidates.
Expectedly, some of the parties have entered accord with the others to see if their members in Ihiala can switch camps because their preferred political parties did not even score one vote in the 20 out of the 21 LGA results already declared by INEC.
Experience has shown that anywhere there was supplementary elections showed that some smaller political parties compromised their stands by collapsing into the bigger parties they perceived have the capacity to win the election. Ihiala will not be an exceptional case.
