Saraki confident PDP can bounce back in Kwara State and win Saturday's governorship elections

SENATE president Senator Bukola Saraki is confident his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) can bounce back from last Saturday's humiliating defeat in Kwara State and win next weekend's gubernatorial elections.

Last Saturday, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) not only won the presidential elections overwhelmingly with 308,984 votes to the PDP's 138,184, it also cleared all three senatorial seats. In what was the final humiliation, Senator Saraki also lost his own election in the Kwara Central Senatorial District to Dr Ibrahim Oloriegbe of the PDP by a whopping 33,358 votes.

Despite his humiliating defeat, Senator Saraki is confident the PDP governorship candidate Razak Atunwa  can win nest Saturday's gubernatorial contest. He urged his supporters not to be discouraged by the outcome of the presidential and National Assembly elections in the state, asking them to troop out en masse to vote for the PDP governorship and Kwara State House of Assembly candidates on March 9.

Yesterday, Senator Saraki was given a heroic reception on arrival at the Ilorin International Airport by crowd of supporters, where he told them that the PDP has the numbers to emerge victorious in the remaining elections. He appealed to his supporters and other aggrieved stakeholders to overlook wherever the system might have erred in the overall interest of Kwara state.

Senator Saraki said: “Those you voted for in anger are not your people and cannot attend to your needs as we, who are your brothers will do. I can’t run away, my covenant with my people transcends politics, so I will never abandon my people.

"We should not fight, as I leave everything to God. I will not fight even with those they declared winners of the last weekend’s elections but we must cooperate for the governorship elections.”

“We should stop internal wrangling. The people you have voted for are not known to you, so we should forgive ourselves and move forward in the interest of our state."