With the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) virtually sweeping the Nation-al Assembly polls in the North-western party of Nigeria, Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State Monday described the development as “a rejection of sectional calls, the manipulation of Northern sentiments and emotions and a vote for national stability”.

But the ripples over the elections continued in many parts of the country Monday, with the result of the controversial Anambra Central Senatorial District finally called in favour of Dr. Chris Ngige of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) after initial reports that it had been cancelled.

The Returning Officer for Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mr. Alex Anene, emerged at Tourist Garden, Awka, Monday night and declared that Ngige scored 68,208 votes and to beat Prof. Dora Akunyili of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) who scored 68,164.

Anene said no election was cancelled because he had all the EC8 forms for the cancellation, maintaining that no one else could claim to have cancelled the result of any ward or unit. He then declared Ngige winner and disappeared.

Also, the PDP has attained the simple majority figure in the Senate with the results announced so far and is inching towards simple majority in the House of Representatives as well.

Lamido, speaking in Dutse, the Jigawa State capital, while presenting the winners of the elections to the people, said that there was massive propaganda that he should be punished and embarrassed at the polls for refusing to toe what was presented as a Northern line in the PDP Primaries last January.

“But as God would have it because I am his creature, the people of Jigawa believed me that I had done nothing to embarrass my religion or harm the interest of the North,” he said.

Lamido had been derisively called “Bishop Lamido” after the PDP presidential primary in January for supporting a Christian (Jonathan) while the PDP has been reportedly presented in the largely Muslim North-west as a “Christian party” in a bid allegedly designed to whip up religious sympathy for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).