Ganduje declared winner of Kano elections as opponents cry foul amid violence and ballot box snatching

KANO State's Governor Abdullahi Ganduje has been returned to office amid controversial circumstances after a rancorous collation exercise ended with the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) declaring him victorious after the re-run.

Nicknamed Gandollar after he was filmed stuffing dollars bills into his pocket during a sting operation in which he was filmed taking a bribe from a contractor, Governor Ganduje had become the butt of corruption jokes across the country. Seen as the embodiment of corruption, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had targeted him as someone they could dislodge.

Kano had been one of the states where the initial gubernatorial exercise had been declared inconclusive due to electoral violence, ballot box snatching and over-voting. After the initial election on March 9, Alhaji Abba Yusuf of the PDP led with 1,014,474 votes to 987,819 votes for Governor Ganduje.

As was the case with other states where the results were declared inconclusive, Inec held supplementary elections in Kano State yesterday. In Kano, however, the exercise was marred with violence, ballot box snatching, thuggery, hooliganism and voters being driven away from polling stations by hired thugs.

Many citizens were attacked and remain in hospital after hoodlums injured them with cutlasses, sticks, stones and other forms of dangerous weapons. At the collation today, agents from several of the political parties called ion Inec to cancel the exercise and conduct fresh elections because the polls were not free, fair and credible.

Acknowledging that there were problems, the Kano State returning officer Professor Bibi Shehu urged all aggrieved parties to take their grievances to the election tribunal. He then proceeded to announce the collated results, pronouncing that Governor Ganduje had won the elections with 1,033,695 votes to 1,024,713 votes for Alhaji Yusuf.

Governor Ganduje of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won with a margin of more than 9,000 votes after the collation of the supplementary election figures. At the end of the exercise held in 28 local government elections, the PDP polled a total of 10,239 votes against 45,876 votes secured by the APC.

Before the elections were declared inconclusive after the March 9 governorship election, the PDP was leading with 1,014,474 votes, while APC had secured 987,819 votes. However, the APC somehow managed to turn things round, especially in Nasarawa Local Government Area where it secured 10,536 votes to the PDP's 3,409 votes.

After the close race, Governor Ganduje ended up winning with a margin of 8,982 votes. However, results from four polling units were cancelled in Gama Ward in Nasarawa Local Government Area due to incidents of over voting and violence, resulting in 2,639 votes being nullified.