Opinion: Nigeria 2019: Of Voided Votes and Inconclusive State Polls, By Rafiq Raji
“…In Rivers, INEC…suspended until further notice the elections due to violence in polling units and collation centres, staff being taken hostage and election materials, including results sheets, seized or destroyed by unauthorised persons. There is no doubt that the electoral process there was severely compromised.” If this conclusion is also made of the entire 2019 electoral process, one would be justified.
In Adamawa, the PDP’s Ahmadu Fintiri got 367,471 votes, while the APC’s Jibrila Bindow, the incumbent, got 334,995 votes. As the margin of 32,476 votes was less than the cancelled votes of 40,988, the Adamawa election was declared inconclusive. In Plateau, incumbent Simon Lalong of the APC received 583,255 votes against 538,326 votes for the PDP’s Jeremiah Useni. With cancelled votes of 49,377 more than the margin between the two of 44,929 votes, the poll was equally declared inconclusive.
What is abundantly clear is that the quality of the 2019 elections would have been greatly enhanced had the amended electoral law been assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari. Now that he has won re-election, Mr. Buhari should do the great service of, first, signing the amended electoral bill that was forwarded to him ahead of the 2019 polls, before the end of the current legislative term.
Some have attempted to spin the close race in Kano and the clear PDP lead there as Mr. Buhari’s doing, suggesting that when the president raised Mr. Ganduje’s hand at his rally in Kano, he made a subtle remark in Hausa to suggest he did not wholeheartedly support the governor’s candidacy. That is nonsense.
APC’s poor showing in the presidential poll in Lagos was clearly a wake-up call for the leaders of the party, who were perhaps getting a little complacent. A video recording of one of the post-mortem meetings of the party after the poll which I watched, showed party leader, Bola Tinubu calling out the leaders of each of the key sections of the state, publicly applauding those who came through for the party in their areas of responsibility and deriding those who did not.
So why the very wide margin in the presidential election and the tighter one in the gubernatorial election? When the Kwankwasiyya political group, led by former Kano state governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, turned up en masse for the rally of PDP’s presidential flagbearer Atiku Abubukar on February 10, some of the assumptions about the strength of Mr. Buhari’s followership in the state began to unravel a little bit.
Some have attempted to spin the close race in Kano and the clear PDP lead there as Mr. Buhari’s doing, suggesting that when the president raised Mr. Ganduje’s hand at his rally in Kano, he made a subtle remark in Hausa to suggest he did not wholeheartedly support the governor’s candidacy. That is nonsense.
From the outset, the intuition was that PDP’s Abubakar would have a difficult time winning the hearts of voters in the North-west. But with Sokoto’s governor, Aminu Tambuwal and former Kano State governor, Kwankwaso in his camp, some of these assumptions required a re-examination. Against a Tambuwal of Sokoto State, who was a frontrunner for the ticket back then, it might have been a different story. This is because, apart from being young and scandal-free, the argument of a potential eight years for the North in the state house in Abuja would have been hard to beat.
The outgoing governor, Ibikunle Amosun of the APC, who is now a senator-elect, backed the APM candidate. Of course, the APC would be wise to keep Mr. Amosun within the fold. Because since the APM has already announced it would be going to the tribunal to contest the results, the APC could ask Mr. Amosun to stop the court challenge in exchange for the APC lifting his suspension from the party.
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