The All Progressive Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate in Benue state, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, has been declared the winner of last Saturday’s governorship elections in the state by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Declaring the result of the election, the State Returning Officer, Professor Farouk Kuta, said he was relying on the “provisions of section 24 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022 and the Electoral Guideline of INEC to the declare the result of the election” despite the pending election in Kwande LGA.

The APC candidate defeated his closest rival, Titus Uba of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who came a distant second, with a margin of 251,020 votes.

Prof. Kuta stated that the APC candidate polled a total of 473,933votes to defeat Uba of the PDP, who garnered a total of 223,913 votes

The candidate of the Labour Party (LP)  Herman Hembe scored 41,881 votes to come third.

A breakdown of the result declared by the Electoral body showed that the APC won in 17 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the 23 in the state, PDP took four LGAs, while LP took one LGA.

The declared result also indicates that the total valid votes in the election stood at 756,903, the total votes cast was 768,404 while the total Rejected votes in the election stood at 11,499.

Shortly after the announcement of the outcome of the poll supporters of the APC took to the streets of Makurdi to celebrate the victory of the Catholic Priest.