Hope dims for ‘Mama Taraba’ as PDP candidate in early lead

Aisha AlhassanThe hope of All Progressives Congress producing Nigeria’s first female elected governor in the country appears to be a forlorn one as results trickling in from Taraba State indicate the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate, Darius Ishaku, was coasting home to victory.

The APC candidate, Senator Aisha Alhassan, hoped to turn the tide against the PDP following the declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission that the April 11 governorship poll in the state was inconclusive.

Going into the re-run polls yesterday, Mrs. Alhassan was trailing behind Mr. Ishaku with 54,812 votes.

However, results of the election at the polling units across the 218 voting points across the 10 local government areas of the state, clearly placed Ishaku ahead of his main challenger. The figures show that he has polled a total of 1,598 votes against APC’s 427 as at the time of filling this report.

In the substantive poll, the PDP candidate garnered 317,198 votes as against 262,386 votes for the APC candidate.

We must however, stress that this is a developing story as result collation is still at the early stages in the state.