OZORO / ASABA, Delta State — The Independent National Electoral Commission has restored Isoko North II State Constituency, the second Delta State House of Assembly seat for Isoko North Local Government Area.
The announcement came on Friday, 15 August 2026, in a statement by INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mohammed Kudu Haruna. The commission said it was acting on court judgments that ordered the return of constituencies dropped from earlier delimitation.
Isoko North II is named with two other restored Delta seats — Abraka and Ughelli South II — and with Yagba West II in Kogi State.
What the May story left open
On 4 May 2026 this newspaper published Isoko North Constituency II: The Suppressed Seat and the Fight for Fair Representation. That report set out how the 1998 delimitation left Isoko North with one Assembly member while Isoko South kept two, and how a 30 April 2026 INEC memo began technical work on other Delta seats — Ethiope West I, Sapele II, Ika North East II — without listing Isoko North II.
That gap is now closed on paper. On 31 July 2026 the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Delta State, Sir Etekamba Udo Umoren, told a stakeholders’ meeting in Asaba that restoration of Abraka, Ughelli South II and Isoko North II had begun. The 15 August statement made the restoration formal.
What INEC has and has not done
Haruna fixed 21–25 August 2026 for party primaries in the restored constituencies. He said that window coincides with primaries for separate bye-elections — including Udu in Delta State — whose polls were listed for 19 September 2026.
The same statement added that “all other timelines and activities contained in the already published revised Timetable and Schedule of Activities for the 2027 General Election shall apply to the restored Constituencies.”
Those two sentences should not be collapsed. Isoko North II is restored. It is not, on the face of that text, the same race as the 19 September bye-elections. This newspaper will not name a member for the seat until a candidate is declared elected and sworn in.
INEC has also not published, as of this report, which of Isoko North’s thirteen wards will sit in North I and which will sit in North II. Until that map exists, the sitting member for the whole LGA remains Hon. Bernard Odior of Isoko North State Constituency.
Why the seat matters in Isoko Nation
Before 1999 Isoko North, like Isoko South, had two voices in Asaba. After the suppression, every road argument, school brief and oil-host complaint from Ozoro, Iyede, Owhe, Emevor, Ellu, Ofagbe, Oyede, Okpe-Isoko and the other northern clans travelled through one member.
South still sends two: Isoko South I (Oleh, Emede, Irri) and Isoko South II (Olomoro, Aviara, Igbide, Enwhe, Umeh–Erowha, Uzere). A restored North II would even that arithmetic. It does not create a second federal seat. The House of Representatives office remains the single Isoko North / Isoko South Federal Constituency. The Senate seat remains Delta South.
Isoko groups had kept the demand public through 2026, including the Isoko Monitoring Group’s June call on INEC. Senator Joel Onowakpo Thomas had used the North II case in the Senate. The May article on this site is the standing background. This report is the sequel.
Anyone with the commission’s ward notice or a swearing-in record should send it to info@isoko.com.ng.