At 3:12, Prof. Rufus Shaato, the returning officer, announced that Zam had won the election at the INEC zonal office in North bank, Makurdi.
Shaato told reporters and party representatives that Zam won the election with 143,151 votes. Samuel Ortom of the Peoples’ Democratic Party came in second with 106,882 votes, and Mark Gbillah of the Labour Party came in third with 51,950 votes.
Across the senatorial district, results from different polling units, wards, and local government area collation centres showed that the governor lost 6 of the 7 local government councils. He only won in his own Guma local government.
During Ortom’s first term in office, the man who will be a senator was his Special Adviser on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.
Senator Abba Patrick Moro, an incumbent in office representing the Benue South senatorial district, beat Comrade Daniel Onjeh of the All Progressive Congress (APC) and Hon. Joseph Ojobo of the Labour Party (LP) to keep his seat.
Prof. Robert Tee, the INEC Chief Returning Officer for the Benue South Senatorial election, announced the results at the INEC Collation Centre in Otukpo. He said that Senator Moro got 76,459 votes, more than his closest competitor, Comrade Daniel Onjeh, who was running for the APC. Onjeh got 59,938 votes.
Joseph Ojobo of the Labour Party came in third with 40,194 votes.
As of the time this report was written, the results for the Benue Northeast senatorial district between incumbent Senator and former governor of Benue state Gabriel Suswam of the PDP and Emmanuel Memga Udende of the APC were still being counted.
