APC wins Katsina supplementary rerun election

The Independent National Electoral Commission on Saturday declared Mansur Mashi of the All Progressive Congress (APC), as the winner of the supplementary election into the Mashi/Dutsi Federal constituency.

Prof Hudu Ayuba, the returning officer, said Mashi scored 30,719 votes against 22,690 votes scored by Malam Nazifi Yusuf of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

He said in the supplementary election held in six affected polling units in Dutsi local government, the APC scored 934 votes while PDP got 217 votes out of the 1,177 votes cast.

Similarly, in the nine polling units in Mashi local government area, the APC scored 16,332 against PDP’s 676 votes out of the 2,231 total votes cast.

Ayuba said these scores were added to the previous votes recorded by the political parties during the bye election conducted in May 2017 to arrive at the final result.

Ayuba announced that a total of 3,382 votes were cast during the Saturday election out of the 9,089 registered voters in the affected polling units.

He said the number of valid votes was 3,370 while 286 votes cast were rejected.

NAN reports that the election into the Mashi/Dutsi Federal Constituency which was earlier won by Mashi was nullified by the Election Petition Tribunal due to “substantial non compliance with election rules and regulations”.

The Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the tribunal and ordered supplementary election in the 15 polling units.