Presidency warns APC governors where re-runs are taking place that Buhari will not interfere in their favour

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has warned his party's governors who face supplementary elections on March 23 that he is not going to intervene in the matter and get the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) to manipulate the results in their favour.

 

On March 9, Nigerians went to the polls to elect governors in 29 states but in six states, the results were declared inconclusive and supplementary elections have been planned for March 23. This means Inec will hold re-runs in parts of in Benue, Kano, Sokoto, Adamawa and Plateau states, while in Bauchi and Rivers states, the commission intends to resume the collation of results and announce a winner this week.

 

In all the cases, the fight for the governorship is between President Buhari's ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). With indications that the PDP appears to be set to win most of these contests, several sitting APC governors are getting nervous and the political temperature is rising as they contemplate losing office.

 

Presidential spokesman Mallam Garba Shehu, has warned these governorship candidates that President Buhari would not manipulate Inec in their favour. He also warned political leaders making inflammatory statements capable of inciting the citizenry to violence ahead of Saturday’s supplementary elections to desist from such acts immediately.

 

According to Mallam Shehu, Inec was fully in charge of electoral matters in the country, not President Buhari, who would neither interfere with the process nor change results in favour of the ruling APC. He added that some party leaders expected President Buhari to abuse his office by usurping the powers of Inec to turn the tables in their favour.

 

Mallam Shehu said: “The presidency also rejects unfair and ridiculous criticisms of President Muhammadu Buhari’s apparent disinterest in the upcoming elections in some states by party members, who wrongfully assume that the president will abuse power by changing results to favour them. Past presidents of Nigeria were known to interfere in inconclusive elections and that is why party members appear to be upset that the same thing is not happening now but President Buhari is a different kind of leader.

 

"He swore to defend the constitution and will not veer off from that. The constitution of Nigeria gives the president no such powers, so it is unfair and ridiculous to criticise President Buhari for not going against the constitution.

 

“Party members in states where there will be supplementary elections then need to be reminded that they need to work hard to earn their people’s votes, rather than expect President Buhari to manipulate Inec in their favour. Interestingly, while members of the ruling APC were criticising the president for not interfering on their behalf, members of the opposition were condemning the president based on their assumptions that he would definitely interfere, as many in the opposition did while in power."

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