By Barth Ndubuwah
The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Saturday’s Rivers South East Senatorial District by-election, Olaka Nwogu, has defeated all other political parties to win the Senatorial seat.
The election, which took place across the seven local government areas that make up the senatorial district, saw Olaka Nwogu polling 47,961 votes to beat his closest rival, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who scored 1,647 votes to finish as the first runner-up.
In the same vein, the Action Alliance (AA) scored 1,175 votes, while the Labour Party (LP) came a distant fourth with 367 votes.
Announcing the results at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters in Port Harcourt, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner for Rivers State, Dr. Johnson Alalibo, declared that the PDP candidate, Olaka Nwogu, having scored the highest number of valid votes cast, was returned as the winner and declared elected.
The local government areas involved in the by-election were Andoni, Eleme, Oyigbo, Khana, Gokana, Tai, and Opobo/Nkoro.
The by-election was necessitated by the death of Senator Barry Mpigi, the lawmaker who previously represented the Rivers South East Senatorial District in the upper chamber of the National Assembly.
Journalists who covered the polls reported that the exercise witnessed significant voter apathy, which was largely attributed to a heavy downpour on Saturday morning.
It was also observed that while the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices malfunctioned in some polling units initially, the technical issues were resolved as the election progressed.