Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has said the electoral defeat suffered by the All-Progressives Congress (APC) at his polling unit, Ungwar Sarki in Kaduna North Local Government Area to the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was not because of his non-performance or governance style as a lot of people have claimed.
Announcing the election result, the Presiding Officer of the Unit, Muhammad Sani, said the APC polled 62 votes in the chairmanship election, while the PDP scored 86 votes out of the 159 votes cast.
In the councillorship election, APC also polled 53 votes, while PDP garnered 100 votes out of 162 total votes cast.
Speaking in an interview on Channels Television, the governor said the APC lost because the people in the area voted against the councilor who was going for another term.
He said “Yes, I lost my polling unit. Yes, the councillor in my ward is PDP but that is okay. The councillor that was in the first term was APC, I don’t think the people liked him very much, so they voted against him. They voted against the individual, not really against the party”.
“But they gave more votes to the chairmanship candidates than they did to the councillors because they know the councillor, they see him every day. The chairman is a bit remote. And of course, the governor is very far remote. So, those saying it is a referendum on me got it wrong. I am not on the ballot”.
While applauding the use of an electronic voting system in the local government election, El-Rufai said the APC lost many councillorship seats to the PDP because the party returned many of the councilors but the people of the state who were not satisfied with their performance voted against them.
According to him, the result of the exercise has given the people of the state a lot of confidence that their votes will always count in future elections.
“We need to have more advocacy on the use of the machines and the third thing which I think is a very positive thing is the fact that, for instance in Kaduna North local government, even though APC won the chairmanship, we lost more than half of the councilors because the councilors that served in the last three years were returned by the party using consensus but many people were not happy with that. So, they voted against them. They didn’t vote for PDP, they voted against the councillorship candidates, so we lost,” the governor said.