How Fayemi won Ekiti gubernatorial election

The candidate of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), Kayode Fayemi, has been officially declared the winner of the Ekiti State governorship election. The chief returning officer of the election, Idowu Olayinka, a professor and vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan, announced the final results in the early hours of Sunday.

Mr Fayemi secured 197,459 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Olusola Eleka of the Peoples Democratic Party who scored 178,121 votes. None of the other 33 candidates had up to 10,000 votes.

Mr Fayemi won in 12 of the 16 local government areas in the state while Mr Eleka won in four local governments. Mr Olusola is the incumbent deputy governor of the state and was hoping to succeed his boss, Ayodele Fayose, who had campaigned vigorously for him. The results of the election mark a remarkable rebound for Mr Fayemi, who as the incumbent governor, was roundly defeated four years ago by Mr Fayose. Though the election was generally peaceful across the state, there was large-scale vote-buying by supporters of the two major political parties. There were also few cases of ballot box snatching.

A total of 403,451 votes was cast with 384,594 valid votes. A total of 18,857 votes was rejected.