By Simpson Global Media News Desk
Nigeria’s latest legislative by-elections have produced five new members of the federal and state legislatures, with the All Progressives Congress winning four of the five seats contested across Gombe, Kano, Bauchi and Delta states, while the Allied Peoples Movement secured the remaining seat in Bauchi.
The elections, conducted on Saturday, September 19, were organised by the Independent National Electoral Commission to fill vacancies in one House of Representatives constituency and four State House of Assembly constituencies. INEC’s official election calendar lists the five contests as the Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye Federal Constituency election, two Bauchi State House of Assembly elections in Disina and Sakwa, the Udu State Constituency election in Delta, and the Dawakin Kudu State Constituency election in Kano.
The results were declared after voting and collation across the affected constituencies. In Gombe, APC candidate Usman Maijama’a Kallamu won the federal constituency seat with 41,121 votes. In Kano, APC candidate Hussaini Yusuf-Datti won the Dawakin Kudu State Constituency with 22,890 votes. APC candidates also won the Disina constituency in Bauchi and Udu constituency in Delta.
The one seat outside the APC column went to APM candidate Adamu Yakubu, who won the Sakwa State Constituency in Bauchi with 8,515 votes.
The elections come less than four months before Nigeria’s scheduled 2027 presidential and National Assembly elections and less than five months before the next round of governorship and State House of Assembly elections. INEC’s current timetable places the presidential and National Assembly elections on January 16, 2027, followed by governorship and State House of Assembly elections on February 6.
While the by-elections involved a relatively small number of constituencies, the results have immediately become part of the political conversation surrounding the next general election.
For the parties, however, the contests also involved specific local vacancies, individual candidates, local political structures and constituency-level issues. The results therefore establish who won the five seats but do not, by themselves, provide a nationwide measurement of voter preferences for the 2027 election.
Five vacancies, four states
The September 19 elections followed vacancies created by different circumstances.
In Gombe, the Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye federal constituency seat became vacant following the death of its former representative, Yaya Bauchi Tongo. The election covered three local government areas — Gombe, Kwami and Funakaye — and 903 polling units across 31 registration areas.
In Kano, the Dawakin Kudu State Constituency seat became vacant after Shuaibu Rabiu Nagoggo, popularly known as Abba Gano, moved from the state House of Assembly to the House of Representatives after winning the federal constituency election held earlier in the year.
Bauchi had two separate State House of Assembly contests.
The Disina constituency seat was one of them, while the second was Sakwa in Zaki Local Government Area. The two constituencies therefore produced different results even though they were contested on the same election day.
In Delta, the Udu State Constituency seat was also contested.
INEC's election calendar confirms that all five contests were scheduled for September 19, 2026. Its results management system subsequently listed results for all five elections, although a small number of polling-unit result sheets were still being uploaded when the system was checked after the election.
The contests therefore represented a geographically dispersed test of the electoral process rather than a single statewide election.
Gombe: Kallamu wins federal constituency seat
The most substantial contest in terms of legislative level was the Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye Federal Constituency election.
APC candidate Usman Maijama’a Kallamu secured 41,121 votes, according to the result announced by the returning officer, Professor Umar Gurama Abubakar.
The election recorded 47,301 votes cast, with 46,551 declared valid and 750 rejected. The result covered 903 polling units in the three local government areas making up the federal constituency.
Published results from the returning process put the Labour Party on 3,553 votes, the Allied Peoples Movement on 872 and the New Nigeria Democratic Party on 707. Other candidates also participated in the contest.
The result was formally declared at the collation process in Gombe after the votes from the affected polling units were aggregated.
Kallamu's victory means the APC will occupy the vacant federal constituency seat for the remainder of the current legislative tenure.
The result also gives the party another federal legislative position from the constituency, but the numerical scale of the victory has to be understood within the specific electorate and circumstances of the by-election rather than treated as a direct measure of national voting intentions.
The election itself was considerably smaller than a nationwide general election. It involved voters in three local government areas and was conducted to replace a single vacant House of Representatives seat.
Kano: APC candidate takes Dawakin Kudu
In Kano, APC candidate Hussaini Yusuf-Datti won the Dawakin Kudu State Constituency election with 22,890 votes.
The result was announced by the returning officer, Ibrahim Tajo-Suraj.
The Peoples Redemption Party candidate, Habib Hamisu, recorded 270 votes, while the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Abdullahi Adamu, received 108 votes. Other candidates included representatives of the Action Democratic Party, All Peoples Party and Labour Party.
The constituency had become vacant following the movement of Shuaibu Rabiu Nagoggo from the Kano State House of Assembly to the House of Representatives.
Nagoggo had subsequently won the federal constituency election triggered by the death of the previous federal representative, Muhammad Hassan.
The sequence created an unusual electoral chain: the death of a federal lawmaker produced a federal by-election; the winner of the resulting federal contest had previously occupied a state assembly seat; and that state seat subsequently became vacant and required another by-election.
The September 19 election therefore completed the process of filling that particular state constituency vacancy.
Bauchi produces two different outcomes
Bauchi produced the most varied party outcome of the five contests.
The APC won Disina, while the APM won Sakwa.
In Disina State Constituency, APC candidate Yakubu Ali secured 5,846 votes. The APM candidate received 5,225 votes, while the Peoples Redemption Party recorded 3,701 votes.
The margin between the first and second candidates was considerably narrower than the margins reported in some of the other contests.
In Sakwa, however, APM candidate Adamu Yakubu won with 8,515 votes.
The APC candidate finished with 3,771 votes, the PDP candidate with 2,076 and the PRP candidate with 727.
The Sakwa result gave the APM its only victory among the five September 19 contests.
The two Bauchi results demonstrate why aggregated by-election results need to be separated by constituency.
Although both elections took place in the same state on the same day, voters in Disina and Sakwa produced different outcomes. The contests involved separate constituencies, candidates, local political networks and electoral dynamics.
The results also mean that the September by-elections did not produce a uniform party outcome across all five seats.
Delta: APC takes Udu
In Delta State, APC candidate Okolosi Ator won the Udu State Constituency election with 8,724 votes.
The result gave the APC its fourth seat of the five contested on September 19.
The Udu election was one of the two State House of Assembly contests outside the northern states.
The result adds another APC member to the Delta State legislative picture following the vacancy in the Udu constituency.
As with the other contests, the by-election was designed to fill a specific legislative vacancy rather than determine control of the state government.
That distinction is important because the State House of Assembly election and a governorship election involve different electoral questions and electorates.
What INEC's results system shows
INEC's electronic results platform provides a further picture of the administrative stage reached after the election.
The system listed 303 expected result sheets for Dawakin Kudu and showed all 303 uploaded. For Disina, 93 of 95 expected results had been uploaded at the time of the system's latest status check. Gombe had 897 of 903 uploaded, while Sakwa had 92 of 100 and Udu had 261 of 265.
The figures show that the electronic publication process was substantially complete but that some result sheets remained outstanding when the platform was checked.
INEC's IReV platform separately listed the September 19 contests for public viewing, including the Disina, Udu, Dawakin Kudu, Sakwa and Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye elections.
The electronic availability of polling-unit result sheets is part of the commission's broader approach to electoral transparency.
For political parties, observers and voters, the publication of result sheets provides a mechanism for checking the results entered at polling-unit level against the aggregated figures announced at collation centres.
Turnout and voter participation
The by-elections also attracted attention because reports from some polling locations described relatively low voter turnout.
On election day, reports from Gombe and Kano described polling units where INEC officials arrived before voting began but waited for voters to turn up. Some centres recorded only a small number of voters during the early hours of voting.
The turnout question is important in interpreting by-election results.
A candidate's vote total reflects the people who actually participated in that particular contest, not every registered voter in the constituency.
By-elections can also have different participation patterns from general elections because they involve fewer offices, receive different levels of public attention and may be contested under circumstances unique to the constituency.
INEC's election results platform confirms that the five contests involved different numbers of polling units, from 95 in Disina to 903 in Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye.
That variation makes it inappropriate to treat the raw vote totals across the five contests as directly comparable measures of party strength.
A vote total of several thousand in one constituency cannot automatically be compared with another constituency without considering its electorate, polling-unit structure, number of candidates and turnout.
Why the results are attracting 2027 attention
The timing of the by-elections has inevitably linked them to the political preparations for 2027.
INEC has already published its schedule for the next general elections. The presidential and National Assembly elections are set for January 16, 2027, while governorship and State House of Assembly elections are scheduled for February 6.
Political parties are consequently building structures, selecting candidates and engaging supporters ahead of the national electoral cycle.
The September by-elections provide recent examples of actual voting behaviour in five constituencies, but the contests remain geographically and politically limited.
President Bola Tinubu, in a statement following the results, congratulated the APC candidates who won four of the five seats and described the results as evidence of continued support for the party and its administration. That is the President's political interpretation of the results rather than an independent assessment of what the by-elections demonstrate nationally.
APC National Chairman Nentawe Yilwatda also congratulated the party's candidates and called on them to regard their victories as a responsibility to their constituents.
Those statements form part of the political response to the elections.
The actual electoral facts are the constituency-level results announced by the returning officers and recorded through INEC's election processes.
What the results do — and do not — establish
The five elections establish the successful candidates for those particular seats.
They also provide a snapshot of the parties that secured those constituencies in September 2026.
They do not, however, establish the outcome of the 2027 presidential election or provide a reliable nationwide projection of the next general elections.
The 2027 presidential race involves a national electorate and a substantially different political contest.
Similarly, governorship elections will be decided at state level, while National Assembly and State House of Assembly elections will involve their respective constituencies.
The by-election results can therefore be reported as recent electoral events without treating them as a forecast.
That distinction is particularly important because political parties and their supporters may interpret the same election differently.
A governing party can point to the number of seats it won. An opposition party can focus on individual constituencies where it performed better than expected or on the level of voter participation. Analysts may examine candidate selection, local alliances, party organisation, incumbency and turnout.
Those interpretations are political or analytical assessments.
The confirmed information is narrower: five legislative seats were contested, four were won by APC candidates and one by an APM candidate.
The Bauchi exception
The APM victory in Sakwa is one of the clearest reasons to avoid treating the results as a uniform outcome.
Adamu Yakubu won the constituency with 8,515 votes, more than double the APC candidate's 3,771 votes. The PDP and PRP candidates also received substantial numbers relative to the total recorded in the constituency.
The result shows that the APC did not win every constituency in which it participated.
It also illustrates the importance of local contests within the broader national party system.
Nigeria's political parties operate through national structures, but elections are ultimately decided constituency by constituency. Candidate popularity, local alliances, community networks, political history and campaign organisation can influence individual contests.
Consequently, a party's performance in one constituency cannot automatically be transferred to another.
The September 19 results themselves demonstrate this: the same election day produced an APC victory in Disina and an APM victory in Sakwa, both in Bauchi State.
The significance of candidate-level politics
By-elections can be particularly sensitive to candidate-level factors because the contest is concentrated around a single vacant seat.
In a general election, voters simultaneously choose among presidential, senatorial, House of Representatives, governorship and state assembly candidates, depending on the election cycle.
In a legislative by-election, the choice is narrower.
This can make the identity of individual candidates, their relationships with local political structures and the circumstances that produced the vacancy more prominent.
The Gombe election, for example, followed the death of the constituency's previous representative. The Kano election followed a chain of vacancies created by a former state legislator moving into the House of Representatives.
These are different circumstances from a nationwide election in which voters are selecting a new government.
The role of INEC
For INEC, the five elections also provide another opportunity to operate its current electoral procedures ahead of the 2027 cycle.
The commission's official calendar specifies the September 19 contests and lists the January and February 2027 elections as the next major scheduled polls.
The results platform shows the commission's electronic publication process, while the IReV platform provides access to polling-unit result information.
The September elections therefore form part of the operational preparations leading into a much larger election cycle.
For voters and political parties, issues such as the availability of election materials, accreditation, voting, collation, security, result transmission and publication remain central to confidence in the electoral process.
For the commission, the experience provides another opportunity to identify administrative problems and improve procedures before the larger polls.
From by-elections to the 2027 timetable
Nigeria's political calendar is now moving rapidly toward the 2027 elections.
The presidential and National Assembly election is scheduled for January 16, leaving only a few months between the September by-elections and the national vote.
The governorship and State House of Assembly election is scheduled for February 6.
The period ahead is therefore likely to involve increased political mobilisation, party meetings, campaign planning, candidate engagement and debate over national and local issues.
But the September by-elections remain important primarily because they filled five vacant legislative seats.
The new legislators will serve in the remaining period of the current legislative tenure, subject to the applicable constitutional and electoral arrangements.
Their immediate responsibility is therefore representation in the relevant legislature rather than campaigning on behalf of the next general election.
What happens next for the winners
The successful candidates are expected to assume the legislative responsibilities attached to their respective seats.
Kallamu will take the Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye seat in the House of Representatives.
Yusuf-Datti will occupy the Dawakin Kudu State Constituency seat in the Kano State House of Assembly.
Yakubu Ali will represent Disina in the Bauchi State House of Assembly.
Adamu Yakubu will represent Sakwa in the same Bauchi legislature.
Okolosi Ator will represent Udu in the Delta State House of Assembly.
Their legislative responsibilities will include participating in debates, committee work, constituency representation and consideration of legislation and public matters within their respective chambers.
The duration of their service is tied to the current legislative term, making the by-election results part of the composition of the legislatures before the 2027 cycle.
Parties begin reading the results
The immediate political reaction has centred largely on the distribution of the five seats.
The APC has highlighted its four victories, while the APM has the distinction of taking the remaining Bauchi seat.
President Tinubu congratulated the winners and urged them to justify the confidence placed in them by their constituents. He also commended voters, security agencies and INEC for the conduct of the polls and called for continued improvements ahead of the 2027 elections.
The APC national chairman similarly congratulated the party's successful candidates and called on them to focus on representation.
These statements represent the governing party's response to the election.
Other political actors and observers may draw different conclusions from the same results, particularly concerning turnout, margins and constituency-level competition.
The available evidence supports reporting the results themselves without turning the five contests into a prediction of what will happen nationally in 2027.
Electoral lessons before the larger polls
The September 19 contests also provide a useful reminder of the complexity of Nigerian elections.
The five seats were spread across four states.
One was a federal constituency and four were state constituencies.
The results were not uniform.
The APC won four seats, while the APM won one. Vote totals differed substantially from one constituency to another. Turnout also varied, with reports of relatively low participation in some polling locations.
The administrative requirements also differed because the number of polling units varied significantly.
Gombe's federal constituency election covered 903 polling units, while the state constituency elections involved considerably smaller geographical footprints.
These differences reinforce the need to examine elections at the constituency level.
They also underline why by-election results should not be treated as direct substitutes for opinion polling or nationwide electoral evidence.
A snapshot, not a national verdict
The September 19 by-elections have produced a clear set of winners and completed the process of filling five legislative vacancies.
The APC secured the Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye federal constituency seat, the Dawakin Kudu state constituency seat in Kano, the Disina seat in Bauchi and the Udu seat in Delta.
The APM secured the Sakwa seat in Bauchi.
INEC's results platforms show that the commission has published the polling-unit results for the contests, with most or all of the expected result sheets uploaded depending on the constituency at the time of the latest status check.
The results now become part of the political record as Nigeria approaches its next general election.
The 2027 presidential and National Assembly elections remain scheduled for January 16, while the governorship and State House of Assembly elections are scheduled for February 6.
Between now and then, political parties will continue organising, selecting candidates and presenting their positions to voters.
For INEC, the focus will include preparing for a much larger national electoral exercise.
For the newly elected legislators, the immediate task is to take up their seats and represent their constituencies.
And for voters, the September contests provide another recent example of how Nigeria's electoral system operates at constituency level: through individual candidates, local campaigns, polling units, collation centres and officially declared results.
The five by-elections have therefore changed the composition of five legislative seats while adding another set of electoral data to the political record ahead of 2027.
Their significance beyond those constituencies will ultimately depend on the issues, candidates, parties and electorate that shape the next general elections. For now, the confirmed outcome is straightforward: five legislative vacancies were contested on September 19, 2026, APC candidates won four of the seats, and the APM captured the fifth in Bauchi.
Comments
Post a Comment