Rtd Air Force chief floors Gov Lalong in Senate election

Photo: AVM Napoleon Bali, rtd, Senator-elect, Plateau South Senatorial Zone.

Rtd Air Force chief floors Gov Lalong in Senate election

Air Vice-Marshal (AVM) Napoleon Bali, a fighter pilot and former Head of the Presidential Air Fleet, has humiliated Gov Simon Lalong by defeating him with a landslide victory in Saturday’s National Assembly election.

Bali, the candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, defeated Lalong, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, who is also the Director-General of Tinubu’s APC 2023 Presidential Campaign Council.

Announcing the results in Shendam on Monday evening, the Returning Officer, Prof Goyit, said that Bali polled a total of 148, 844 valid votes against Lalong, who polled a meager 91, 674 votes, and declared Bali winner of the election.

Bali, who is a son in-law of Ex-FCT Minister, Sen Jeremiah Useni, Lalong’s closest rival in the 2019 Plateau State governorship election, also defeated the governor in his own Polling Unit and Ward by polling 1917 votes to defeat the governor, who got 1768  votes.

A breakdown of the results indicate that Bali defeated Lalong in five out of the six local governments in the senatorial zone, including Lalong’s Shendam LGA, as well as the incumbent local government chairman’s Shimankar Ward.

The senator-elect beat Lalong with a wide margin in Quaan-Pan, Shendam, Mikang, Langtang North, and Langtang South, losing to the governor only in Wase, where Reps Deputy Soeaker, Idris Maje, holds sway.

In the presidential election, Gov Lalong also capitulated in his bid to curry support for Tinubu by failing to deliver when they needed him most.

Tinubu only managed to come third by scoring a negligible roughly 150,000 votes across the entire state, despite the governor’s position as Campaign DG.

Instead, it was the Labour Party candidate, Mr Peter Obi, who won the presidential election in Plateau State with 466,272 votes, and was trailed by Tinubu’s APC, who came second with 307,195 votes.

Periscope International recalls that  Gov Lalong had while casting his vote alongside his wife and daughter in his Polling Unit on Saturday, boasted that he and his party would win the polls at all levels.

Lalong had stressed that he was contesting election for the fifth time, adding that he had never lost one and urged the electorate to come out en masse to vote APC candidates from top to bottom.