APC squeezes home in Kaduna as PDP and Labour Party candidates split the opposition vote

ALL Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate in Kaduna State Senator Uba Sani has emerged as the surprise winner of Saturday's governorship contest after the two main opposition parties split the vote between them.

Kaduna was one of the 28 states that went to the polls to elect a governor on Saturday, in what was a three-horse race between Senator Sani of the APC, Isah Ashiru of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Jonathan Asake of the Labour Party. During the presidential elections on February 25, the PDP won overwhelmingly in Kaduna State, with their candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, scoring 554,360 votes.

Alhaji Abubakar beat Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the APC who got 399,293 votes to come second while the Labour Party’s Peter Obi polled 294,494 votes to claim third position. With the PDP in the ascendancy and the APC fielding a Muslim-Muslim ticket for governorship and deputy governorship positions the situation has been looking precarious for the ruling party.

Outgoing Governor Nasir El-Rufai is one of President Muhammadu Buhari's close confidant and a  loss to the PDP would be a personal humiliation for him as it would mean he could neither deliver his state in the presidential elections nor get an APC governor elected. On February 25, the APC lost all of Kaduna State's three senatorial seats to the PDP and in the House of Representatives election, the PDP won 10 seats out of the state's 16 seats.

However, on Saturday, the APC bounced back, clinching victory in the gubernatorial elections, with the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) declaring Senator Sani as the governor-elect. Returning officer Professor Lawal Bilbis, declared that Senator Sani polled 730,002 votes while Mr Ashiru scored 719,196 votes in what was a very close contest.  

Mr Asake, polled 58,283 to come third while the New Nigeria Peoples Party candidate, Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, came to a distant fourth with 21,405 votes, with 19,114 votes rejected. Senator Sani won despite only winning 10 local government areas, compared with the 13 win by his PDP opponent.

In what appears to be classic case of the opposition splitting the vote between them, it looks like the Labour Party took away vital votes in southern Kaduna that the PDP needed to win. Mr Asake, was the president of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union and win in the predominantly Christian part of the state, where the PDP has traditionally been very strong and needed votes to stand any chance of winning.

Prior to the announcement, there were wild jubilations in some parts of the state that the PDP candidate had won the election, however, these celebrations proved to be short-lived. Senator Sani is an El-Rufai protégé, who served as political adviser to the governor before being elected as the incumbent senator for Kaduna Central Senatorial District in 2019.