Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence.

See the breakdown below:

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence. LGA-level results are provisional and not to be taken as official election results.

INEC has just confirmed that the collation of governorship election results for Enugu and Abia state will resume today.

In Enugu, collation from two LGAs: Nsukka and Nkanu East was halted on Monday due to allegations of irregularities. Of the 15 LGAs (out of 17 in the state) that have been announced, PDP has a narrow lead in 8 LGAs (46% of votes) while the Labour Party has won 7 LGAs (43% of votes).

The heat is on in Enugu and we will be monitoring the race closely. 

See the breakdown below:

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence. LGA-level results are provisional and not to be taken as official election results.

News reports indicate that the final collation of Abia State governorship results is expected to resume at 4pm at the INEC state headquarters in Umuahia. This is coming after the process was suspended by INEC on Monday after thugs invaded the INEC collation centre in Obingwa Local Government.

Of the 16 LGAs (out of 17 LGAs in the state) that have been announced, the Labour Party leads with 11 LGAs won and 58% of the votes. While PDP is second-runner-up with 4 LGAs and 26% of the votes.

All eyes are now on Obingwa Local Government to see which party emerges victorious in Abia state. 

See the breakdown below:

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence. LGA-level results are provisional and not to be taken as official election results.

We now have results for all 34 LGAs in Katsina, and for the third election cycle in a row, the APC has won the gubernatorial elections in Katsina. 

This time, the APC won 33 out of 34 LGAs with 70% of the total vote and almost twice the number of votes as the PDP which won just 1 LGA.

INEC already declared APC the winner in the Katsina governorship race but these LGA-level results provide a more granular picture of the political parties’ performances in this election cycle. 

Katsina also voted PDP in the 2023 Presidential election. By voting APC in the governorship race, Katsina is another example of APC governorship candidates riding their presidential candidate’s coattails to victory. 

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence.

Enugu is one of two states without a definitive statement from INEC (Abia is the other). Collation was halted in two LGAs in the state - Nsukka and Nkanu East - due to alleged irregularities. This is to enable INEC to conduct a review of the results.

With 15 LGAs reporting, the PDP has won 8 while the Labour Party claimed 7.

Will PDP emerge as the winner, or will LP close in on them?

See the breakdown below: 

Yesterday, INEC declared the elections in Adamawa State inconclusive.

INEC officials in the state arrived at this conclusion by invoking the margin of lead principle (Section 62 of the Electoral Act 2022), which says that if the number of registered voters in cancelled polling units is greater than the margin between the top two candidates, the election should be re-done in the affected polling units.

But given the available numbers, what are Binani's chances of emerging as the winner of the Adamawa guber race even after the re-run?

The margin between Umaru Fintiri and Senator Aishat Ahmed, Aka "Binani", is over 30,000 votes.

However, the number of registered voters in the affected 44 polling units is only 40,988. This means Binani would need an 80% turnout in those polling units to overturn the margin and then secure EVERY SINGLE VOTE. 

Turnout across Adamawa during the gubernatorial elections was about 32%. So, suddenly seeing a spike of 80% will be highly irregular. 

Let us now assume that there is a turnout at those polling units in line with the state trend. 32% of 40,988 is only 13,116. Even if she won every vote, it would only trim the margin to 19,000 votes.

In summary, those who hope that a state in Nigeria could finally produce an elected female governor will need to wait a little longer. 

We're officially kicking off day 4 of following the gubernatorial races.

Over the night and through the early morning hours, four additional states declared winners. These were Taraba, Rivers, Kaduna and Zamfara.

That makes 24 out of 28 states that have declared winners:

APC leads with fifteen states (Benue, Borno, Cross River, Ebonyi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos,  Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Sokoto, Yobe).

PDP follows with eight states (Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Delta, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Taraba, and Zamfara), while NNPP held onto Kano.

We're holding our breaths to see what unfolds in the remaining four states in the course of the day. INEC has declared results from Kebbi and Adamawa inconclusive, and elections will be re-run. While we are looking to see when officials will resume suspended result collation in Abia and Enugu.

Follow all the action on Stears Elections.

Disclaimer: This information was correct at (8:30 am on 21st March 2023). We understand that irregularities have marred this election cycle amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence. Results reported on this blog are preliminary vote summations sourced from INEC's results viewing portal (IREV) and should not be taken as official election results.

In an upset, Dauda Lawal of the PDP defeated incumbent Bello Matawalle of the APC. Zamfara State has been an ANPP state and then an APC state following the merger in 2014.

The state has never voted for the PDP at the governorship level. Even in the presidential elections on February 25th, the APC won with 59% of the votes. In addition, the PDP won 10 out of 14 local governments in the state in this governorship election. 

For historical and recent reasons, this will be a prized win for the PDP.

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence.

See the breakdown below:

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence. 

See the breakdown below:

1. Results, results and more results

So far, we have results for 20 out of 28 states, and the APC is in the lead with 14 states, the PDP with 5 states and NNPP with 1 state, Kano. Adamawa and Kebbi were declared inconclusive, so we await final results from six states, including Abia, Enugu, Kaduna, Rivers, Taraba and Zamfara.

2. IREV finally comes in handy

In Kaduna, INEC had to turn to IREV for uploaded results when thugs disrupted collation at Kudan LGA, destroying the result sheets. Again, in Adamawa, following disruptions, the INEC official rejected the manually collated results from the Fufore LGA in favour of IREV results.

3. Nigeria's first female governor?

A few hours after we had given up on Adamawa's Binani winning the state election to emerge Nigeria's first female governor, INEC declared the state results inconclusive. This was because 40,988 votes were cancelled across 44 polling units, a greater number than the margin between APC's Binani and PDP's Fintiri (32,476). This means there'll eventually be a re-run in the affected polling units while we wait in suspense for the final results.

Keep following Stears Elections for results.

As we have seen in the case of Oyo, very popular local politicians can easily outperform those with a more national profile contesting the presidency simply because of their closer connection to the people.

The performance in Kano is another interesting one to spotlight, considering the APC's guber candidate outperformed his presidential counterpart by 15 percentage points. A lot of this difference can be traced to the deep roots Nasir Gawuna, the APC's governorship flagbearer has in the state.

Gawuna was the chairman of Nasarawa LGA, the largest LG in the state. He was also the commissioner for agriculture in Kano before becoming deputy governor to Abdullahi Ganduje for two terms. As such, he has developed deep links in the state over time and is seen as a son of the soil.

If Gawuna was up against someone not as popular as the NNPP's Abba Yusuf, the APC's popularity at state level would have translated into a win. We must remember that in 2019, Abba Yusuf forced a re-run in parts of Kano while he was with the PDP. 

In the North East, we expect results from only Taraba state, where an upset might be happening. 

We've received results from Gombe, Borno, Bauchi, and Yobe, while Adamawa has just been declared inconclusive. 

In 2019, the PDP won Taraba state, and governor Darius Ishaku was re-elected. This time around, the results so far show the PDP in the lead with 6 LGAs, followed by the NNPP with 3 LGAs and APC with 1 LGA. 

The NNPP candidate, Prof. Mohammed Sani Yahaya, joined the party after decamping from the APC. With 5 LGAs left to be announced, can the ex-vice chancellor close the margin and emerge as the first Muslim governor of Taraba since 1999?

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence.

Results coming from LGA collation in Zamfara state place PDP in an early lead. PDP has won 7 LGAs and APC has won 2 LGAs. We await 5 LGAs.

Disclaimer: We understand that this election cycle has been marred by irregularities amidst credible reports of voter suppression and violence.

In Ebonyi state, voter turnout during the 2023 governorship election was 21.9%, down from 33% in 2019. Of the state's 1,597,646 registered voters for the 2023 governorship elections, 349,941 votes were cast, a decline from 2019, where 481,975 people voted out of 1,459,933 registered voters. 

Meanwhile, there was little change in turnout between 2023 presidential elections and 2023 gubernatorial elections (21.1% vs 21.9%)