More controversies have continued to greet the result of the presidential election that held in Nigeria in February.
After the crucial political clash, more people have told different stories about what happened and the reasons the outcome came out the way it did amidst controversies of rigging as continuously alleged by the main opposition party in the country.
According to The Guardian, the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai Friday mocked the People’s Democratic Party presidential candidate’s claim that he won in Kaduna State.
“Initially, I thought it was a joke and when I checked I saw clearly that he said he won Kaduna. It must be in his dreams,” El-Rufai told journalists after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock. He will lose Kaduna 10 more times because he has never won Kaduna in any presidential elections,” he added.
Abubakar is challenging Buhari’s victory in an Election Tribunal after he called the election a ‘sham’. On March 5, he got the permission of Court of Appeal in Abuja to inspect and obtain Certified True Copy (CTC) of election materials used in the conduct of the February 23 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
On Monday, Abubakar claimed that the computer server of INEC revealed that he won in four of the states, Gombe, Niger, Kogi, and Kaduna, that INEC declared Buhari winner. He also said he won the poll with about 1.6 million votes above Buhari.
But INEC figures showed Buhari polled 993,445 votes in Kaduna to defeat Abubakar, who scored 649,612 votes.
The state is one of the states, Kano, Katsina, Kaduna and Kebbi, nicknamed the Kardashian states by election observers for their alliterative coincidence with the American celebrity family.
The states have consistently given huge margins to Buhari since his first attempt at becoming civilian president in 2003. This time, Buhari got 4.2m votes, about a quarter of Buhari’s eventual tally, from the four states.
The same opinion was maintained by El-Rufai.
“Let me say this without any fear of contradiction since President Buhari started contesting for the presidency since 2003, he has never lost Kaduna. So, PDP has never won elections in Kaduna from 2003, even with a sitting governor in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015,” he said.
“It has never happened. I don’t know what will happen that Atiku will win Kaduna in this elections this time,” he added. He lost Kaduna, he lost very badly, even though about 100,000 votes he claimed to have got were added because elections were conducted without card reader in some parts of the state, that’s how he even got up to the 400,000.”
In another development, a former Minister for Information, Prof Sam Oyovbaire, has commended the Delta State governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa for the prevailing peace in the state compared to the level of insecurity in Kaduna state describing the Kaduna State governor, Nasir El’Rufai as a “disaster to Kaduna state,” Vanguard reports.
Prof Oyovbaire who is also the chairman, Delta State Advisory and Peace Building Council, also came hard on critics of Governor Okowa who accused him of governing the state with ethnic sentiments, saying, “It is unfortunate that people think Dr. Okowa runs the state with undue ethnic sentiments.”
Speaking to Vanguard on the outcome of the 2019 president elections in the state, he said: “Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has done well by going to the tribunal and a good number of knowledgeable minds have been assembled and they will comb every area where these elections took place.
“The little I now know today is that he has in his possession, very strong evidence and at a general level, allow him to test the process and am glad that he has beaten the deadline in approaching the tribunal and a lot will be revealed in the process.”
On the prevailing peace in the state, Oyovbiare said: “Look at what is happening in Kaduna state, I spent 14years in Zaria and I used to love a particular place in Kaduna because of its beautiful landscape and I used to say if I had my choice to choose where I would like to stay, I would move to that area. “But God forbid, if I had moved, I probably would have been dead by now, and that is the kind of situation today as it gradually became worse under a young man, with due respect to El’Rufai.
Under your watch, how can you catapult a state into virtually a disaster? From this angle of discussion, El’Rufai is a disaster. So, coming back home, in Delta state, we have this peaceful arena under Okowa and people use to appreciate it and we thank God that all the predictions and hype particularly done by our young friend, Adams Oshiomhole who suddenly found himself so important at the national scene, collapsed completely and we thank God for the state.”
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