Why LP, PDP Candidates Lost In Imo Governorship Poll – Imo Govt

The Imo State Government says the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart failed to win last Saturday’s poll because of an internal crisis in their parties.

Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State was declared winner of the last Saturday’s poll in the state.

Uzodimma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) polled 540,308 votes to defeat his closest challenger and the candidate of the PDP, Samuel Anyanwu, who scored 71,503 votes.

The candidate of the LP, Athan Achonu, came third, with 64,081 votes.

A total of 18 candidates from various political parties participated in the election.

The APC candidate won in all 27 local government areas of the state, according to the election results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission on Sunday morning.

Internal crisis

Reacting to the election’s outcome, the Commissioner for Information in Imo State, Declan Emelumba, said apart from the APC, other political parties in the state were not prepared for the poll given that they were battling an internal crisis ahead of the election.

“Before this election, any discerning observer would have seen that virtually the whole of Imo State emptied in APC. The APC is the only party where there was no faction, no defection, no problem,” Mr Emelumba said on Monday when he appeared as a guest on Channels TV’s Politics Today.

“Every other party that contested this election had internal crisis, internal problems, mass defections. So, there was no way they could have won. There was no way they could have even performed better than they did,” he added.

The commissioner said many leaders of the PDP in the state defected to the APC before the governorship election.

He said the former PDP leaders left after Mr Anyanwu emerged as the party’s candidate.