- Safiu Kehinde
Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressive Grand Alliance has won in all the 21 local government areas of Anambra State as the Independent National Electoral Commission declared him the winner of the polls in the early hours of Sunday.
The Returning Officer who is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin (UNIBEN), Prof. Edoba Omoregie, announced final results on Sunday after hours of collation exercise.
As announced by Omoregie, the final declaration of the results showed that Soludo won a second term in office with a total of 422,664.
This was from a total registered voters of 2,788,864 and accredited voters of 598,229 in the 21 local councils of the state.
Soludo was followed by a distant 99,445 votes scored by the All Progressive Congress candidate, Nicholas Ukachuwku.
The result showed that another candidate who showed an impressive performance was that of the Young Progressives Party (YPP), Sir Paul Chukwuma, had 37,753 votes to come third.
In a breakdown of the results, the INEC Returning Officer disclosed that a total of 11,244 votes were rejected out of the 595,298 total votes cast.
“The total valid votes stood at 584,054, rejected votes were 11,244, and the total votes cast amounted to 595,298.
“After collating the results as tallied into Form EC8E, it is now my privilege to declare the figures each candidate scored according to their political parties.
“There were a few areas affected by incidents, leading to cancellations in some wards across Anambra West, Anaocha, Awka South, and Onitsha South LGAs, amounting to 10,481 affected votes.
“However, the margin of lead between the top candidates did not affect the overall outcome of the election.
“I, Prof. Edoba Omoregie, Returning Officer for the 2025 Anambra State Governorship Election, hereby declare that the election was peaceful. Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, having scored 422,664 votes — the highest number of valid votes cast and having satisfied the requirements of the law — is hereby declared the winner and returned elected.” the INEC Returning Officer declared.
The breakdown of the results according to INEC showed the followings:
A- 224
AA- 1,145
AAC- 292
ADC- 8208
APC- 99,445
APGA- 422,664
APM- 892
APP- 73
BP- 126
LP- 10,576
NNPP- 525
NRM – 36
PDP- 1,401
SDP- 241
YPP- 37,753
ZLP- 453
Meanwhile, observers of the election which was held on Saturday largely witnessed reported cases of vote buying across several polling units.