Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State has declared that he is sure of victory in the supplementary election in Kano State scheduled to hold on March 23.
He said his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, had restrategised and all the possible chances of rigging by the opposition had been blocked.
In the March 9 election which was declared inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Abba Yusuf, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, polled 1,014,353 votes beating Ganduje to the second place with 953,522 votes.
However, the Returning Officer, Bello Shehu, declared the election inconclusive.
His reason was that the number of votes cancelled was more than the difference of votes between the two leading candidates.
While the number of votes cancelled was over 100,000 across 172 polling units, the difference of votes between Ganduje and Yusuf was 26,655 votes.
“APC as a party has also re-strategized and very confident of victory because the local government areas where the rerun will take place remain the APC stronghold and the electorate in these areas have made up their mind to vote massively for the Governor they trust.
“The modest achievements recorded so far by the Ganduje Administration have touched the lives of the people in all sectors of development and also remain determined to continue if returned,” said Ganduje in a statement issued by his Commissioner for Information, Muhammad Garba, on the supplementary poll.
In a statement which counters the position of Ganduje, Yusuf of the PDP said he would win the supplementary election just as he accused the APC of tampering with the process.
The statement issued by his spokesman, Sanusi Dawakin-Tofa, reads:
“Kano people have seen glaringly, how the enemies of democracy who are high ranking officials of the state Government, including serving Deputy Governor, Nasiru Gawuna, Commissioner Murtala Garo and Nassaraw Local Government Chairman Lamin Sani Kawaji vandalized an election collation centre with a sole aim of truncating the declaration process to deny PDP’s victory.
“It is our prayer that all election offenders would be charged to courts at the earliest best time to serve as a deterence for all anti-democracy. We call on all supporters to remain calm, we are known to be peace lovers and so we shall remain, as we are very sure of victory during the rerun.
“Our supporters should not forget that PDP is already leading in the last count of the election and interestingly, the bye election would take place in the strongest areas of our party.”
