Governor Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State in North-East Nigeria and the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the March 18, 2023 governorship election has been declared winner of the poll.

Yahaya of the APC scored 342,821 to defeat his close contender, Mohammed Jibrin Barde of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 233,131.

Ahmed Mailantarki of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) came third with votes 19,861 while Keftin Amuga of the Labour Party (LP) scored 1,753.

Governorship elections were held in 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states on Saturday. The governorship and state assembly elections were held a week later than initially scheduled after a court case forced INEC to move them forward.

Eight of the 36 states — Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi, Osun, and Ondo — have governorship elections “off-season” due to litigations and court judgements.

In alphabetical order, the 28 states where governorship elections were on March 18 are Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara.

Of the 28 states, 11 serving governors including Yahaya sought reelection while 17 outgoing governors are in the final weeks of their constitutional two-term limits of eight years, having been sworn in on May 29, 2015.