A week after the 2023 governorship elections across states, the Kebbi State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was wrong to have declared the state’s election inconclusive.
According to the party, its governorship candidate, Nasir Idris, won the poll and should have been declared the winner instead of INEC’s verdict.
Rant HQ recalls that the INEC Returning Officer for Kebbi State, Prof. Yusuf Sa’idu, announced last week that the state’s gubernatorial election is inconclusive due to massive vote cancellation and over-voting in 20 out of the 21 Local Government Areas in the State.
Sa’idu announced that the candidate of the APC scored 388,358 while Mohammed Bande of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) polled 342,980.
“We aggregated the total number of collected PVCs in those polling units, and it came to a total of 91,829. And when we checked the results, the two leading political parties in this contest, APC and PDP, polled 388,258 and 342,980 votes, respectively. When we looked at the difference, it stands at 45,278,” the electoral official revealed.
According to him, the margin between the two candidates was less than the cancelled votes, hence, the need for a re-run.
However, the APC maintained that INEC made an error by declaring the election inconclusive. The Deputy Director-General of the APC Governorship Campaign Council in the state, Alhaji Abubakar Gari, kicked against the decision in Abuja on Sunday, Rant HQ understands.
The retired Deputy Comptroller of Customs said there was no need to declare the elections inconclusive, stressing that the APC candidate won fair and square.
He said, “Our candidate is leading with 45,278. In some states, candidates were declared winners when the margin was a fraction of that. There is no need for a supplementary election.”
“INEC cancelled elections in some polling units because of over-voting and violence. The PDP triggered violence in some of the polling units because they know they are our strongholds.
“Despite the PDP’s machinations, we are still very comfortably ahead. Even if it holds a supplementary election, we are confident of increasing our margin of victory because all the areas where the polls were cancelled are our strongholds.”
He, therefore, urged INEC to immediately declare their candidate as the winner of the election so that the people of Kebbi State, like those of other States, will have peace of mind and go about their normal lives.
