EL-RUFAI AND PDP IN A CLOSE RACE IN KADUNA
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By Adeniyi Onaara
As the governorship and state assembly elections on March 18 approach, political observers predict that the apparent redrawing of Nigeria’s electoral map, which began with the February 23 presidential and National Assembly elections, will continue.
That means that the reigns of some gladiators in certain political parties and states will be decided at the polls. So, either they defend their ‘political kingdom’ and win turf for their parties, or they are dethroned.
Kaduna State, led by Governor Nasir El-Rufai, offers one such intriguing scenario. With his ruling during the February 25 elections, the Peoples Democratic Party nearly made the governor a king without a kingdom. The All Progressives Congress is taking a beating The PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, defeated the APC candidate, Bola Tinubu, in the state.
Atiku received 554,360 votes to defeat Tinubu, who received 399,293 votes to finish second, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party received 294,494 votes to finish third.
El-Rufai has been the APC’s governor of the state since 2015. However, during his tenure, the APC lost three senatorial seats to the PDP in the National Assembly elections.
The state’s main opposition party also won 10 of the state’s 16 House of Representatives seats.
Lawal Usman of the PDP won the Central North Senatorial district seat with 225,066 votes, defeating Abdullahi Sani of the APC, who was the former Chief of Staff and Commissioner for Budget and Planning to Governor El-rufai and received 182,035 votes.
According to the Returning Officer, Prof. Haruna Adamu of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, the candidate of the Labour Party, Ibrahim Sani, came third with 87,510 votes while Umar Tijjani of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, polled 24,395 votes to place fourth.
The PDP also clinched the Kaduna North Senatorial District won by its candidate, Khalid Mustapha, who defeated the incumbent, Senator Suleiman Kwari, of the APC.
Mustapha scored 250,826 votes to defeat Kwari, who got 190,008 votes.
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