APC Wins Benue Council Polls

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Benue State has won all the 23 chairmanship and 276 councillorship seats in the state local government elections conducted at the weekend by the state Independent Electoral Commission.

The election was held in the entire 23 local government areas and the 276 wards in the state.

Announcing the results at the commission’s headquarters in Makurdi yesterday, the Chairman of BSIEC, Dr. John Tsuwua, said the APC won all the 23 chairmanship seats and all the 276 councillorship slots in the state.

He said: “From the results declared from the polling units to ward levels and to the local government headquarters across the state, APC won the entire chairmanship and councillorship seats of the local government areas.”

Tsuwua disclosed that the eight parties that participated in the elections exhibited maximum maturity and conducted the affairs of their parties in orderly manner during and after the elections.

Many analysts are of the view that the APC won the election as a result of the court judgment last Friday that stopped the Ahmed Makarfi faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from participating in the elections.

The BSIEC chairman explained that out of the 276 councillorship seats, 182 candidates of APC were elected unopposed, while 94 seats that were contested by other political parties were still won by APC.

According to him, for the first time in the history of local government elections in the state, the commission did not witness snatching of ballot boxes, killings, gunshot and destruction of other electoral materials in polling units across the local government areas.