Edo State Governorship Election Update: APC Leads in Preliminary Results

As the counting of votes continues in the Edo State governorship election, preliminary results from 16 out of 18 local government areas have been released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). According to these results, the candidate from the All Progressives Congress (APC), Monday Okpebholo, is leading the contest by a margin of nearly 40,000 votes over his closest rival from the People's Democratic Party (PDP), Asue Ighodalo.

INEC announced the temporary suspension of the vote collation process on Sunday afternoon. The break was taken prior to receiving the results from the remaining two local government areas, Oredo and Esan South East. The Resident Electoral Commissioner noted that the collation team is still in the field, thus an exact time for resumption of the collation could not be determined, although a tentative time of 5 PM was indicated by the commission.

A breakdown of the votes from the 16 local government areas shows that the APC garnered a total of 235,773 votes. The PDP is trailing with 195,954 votes, while the Labour Party has accumulated 8,682 votes.

Further updates and the final results are awaited as the counting process nears completion. Citizens and political analysts are closely monitoring the developments, as the election results will determine the political landscape of Edo State for the coming term.