Cross River State Governor, Prof. Ben Ayade has lost his bid to return to the Senate to Senator Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe.
Ayade’s counterpart in Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi also failed to make it in the senatorial election.
The returning officer for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for Cross River North senatorial district, Dr Emmanuel Emanghe announced that Ayade of the All Progressives Congress (APC) polled 56,595 votes against Agom-Jarigbe of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored 76,145 votes.
In Enugu State, Ugwuanyi lost his senatorial bid to Labour Party candidate for the district, Okechukwu Ezea.
Ugwuanyi, who is rounding off his second term as governor, is the PDP candidate for the Enugu North Senatorial District election.
The Returning Officer, Prof. Chukwuemeka Ubaka announced the result at the INEC collation centre in Nsukka Local Government Area headquarters on Monday at about 5: 20 am.
Ezea polled 104,492 votes to defeat Ugwuanyi, who came second with 46,948 votes.
The APC candidate for the district, Ejike Eze, garnered 6,816 votes to come a distant third.
Ubaka said Ezea was declared the winner in the exercise because he “justified all the requirements of the law” having scored the highest number of votes in the election.
Earlier, there was mild drama at the INEC collation centre in the district, when Ubaka said he would not collate the senatorial results unless he was given the district’s authentic forms for results and declaration.
Some Labour Party members had accused the returning officer of colluding with an unnamed opposition candidate to overturn the result against the eventual winner.
The results of the exercise from the six local government areas that make up the district had put Ezea in front, after reportedly winning in nearly all the council areas.
The six council areas that make up the district include Nsukka, Igbo-Eze South, Igbo-Eze North, Igbo-Etiti, Uzo-Uwani and Udenu, where Ugwuanyi hails from.
Ugwuanyi’s defeat marked the first time an opposition political party would unseat a candidate of the ruling PDP in the state.
The PDP had never lost any election in the state since the return of democracy in 1999.
Chukwuka Utazi, the incumbent Senator representing the district, had stepped down for Ugwuanyi, ahead of the PDP primary election for the district in May last year.
Ugwunanyi is a member of the G5 group of PDP governors opposed to their party’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. He will exit office as the governor of the state on 29 May this year after his two terms in office.
