By Efio-Ita Nyok| 31 March 2015| 6: 34 am
The Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC), Nigeria's electoral umpire, had announced in the early hours of today, about 12 am, that it will resume its announcement of the collated results Tuesday 31 March by 10 am.
As it stands, the collated results from 27 states of the federation has been announced, and the candidate of the main opposition party, Mohammadu Buhari, is leading the incumbent president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, by a very wide margin.
It's been speculated that the opposition All Progressives Congress(APC) is leading the ruling Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) by 3 million votes. However, the winner of Nigeria's tightly contested presidential elections cannot be inferred as the strong hold of the PDP's Jonathan, mainly the Niger Delta region, is yet to be collated and announced.
The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria stipulates that the winner in any Presidential elections must have 25% of registered voters out of 24 states. The implication for 2015 Presidential elections is that should either of the major contenders -Buhari or Jonathan, fail to meet this requirement, then INEC may be forced to conduct a rerun of the presidential elections.
Main while, in Cross River state it has been rumoured that INEC's result sheet for the National Assembly elections, hotly contested for by the ruling PDP, whose candidates are Gershom Bassey(Senate) and Rt. Hon. Essien Ayi(House of Representatives), and the major opposition, the Labour Party(LP) whose candidates are Sen. Bassey Edet Otu(Senate) and Dominic Aqua Edem(House of Representatives) has been hijacked by the governor, HE Senator Liyel Imoke who is of the PDP. This hijacking by the governor is believed to secure a win for the PDP especially Gershom Bassey who is perceived not to be the darling of the electorates in the states.
Security agents were seen to be deployed to the major ply routes of the state like Marian road, Eta-Agbor road, etc to frustrate any act of demonstration from a disgruntled public who may decide to take the laws into their hands.
