Emeka Ihedioha, a former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives has been declared the winner of the Imo governorship election.

Ihedioha, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was declared governor-elect by the returning Officer for the election, Professor Francis Ogbonnaya Otunta at 11:57 pm on Monday.

Ihedioha got 273,404 votes, while Uche Nwosu of the Action Alliance (AA) and son-in-law of Governor Rochas Okorocha came second with 190, 364 votes.

Senator Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) came third with 96,458 votes.

Both Uzodinma and Nwosu belonged to the APC until a nomination battle pulled them apart. A simple arithmetic showed that the number of votes jointly polled by both Uzodinma and Nwosu is higher than Ihedioha’s vote.

The governor-elect, Ihedioha, took to Twitter early Tuesday to thank his people and pledged to ‘rebuild’ the state.