Tinubu’s Victory And Gubernatorial Polls -By Ibrahim Mustapha Pambegua

The presidential and National elections conducted on 25th February, have come and gone. The Independent National Electorate Commission(INEC), declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of APC as the president-elect having polled 8,794,726 to beat, Atiku, Obi and Kwankwaso. In the next few days, one should expect the battle to be shifted to court. The leading contenders in the presidential race have disputed and rejected the outcome. They picked holes on the results and promised to challenge it in tribunal. But opposition parties should blame themselves for their inability to wrestle power from the ruling party. They went into the poll as a divided house. The PDP’s  G-5 splitter group has done great damage to Atiku’s presidency. Peter Obi, who became distant third in the race, could not win the popular win. His labour party had won 12 states but could not gathered highest votes to sail to victory. However, the just concluded presidential and National assembly elections’ results had shocked Nigerians to their marrow.

  The landslide victory of labour party(LP) in Lagos, a strong hold of APC, was the first shock of the election day. In Katsina state, the home state of  president Muhammadu Buhari, ruling party APC, lost to PDP. Yobe state which has been in opposition politics since the return of democracy, slipped back to PDP. Another surprises that dogged or trailed the outcome of the 2023, elections was how eight serving governors lost bid to go to senate. The Social Democracy Party(SDP),also won two senate seats in Nasarawa. Many political pundits have quickly stated, the two decades of Nigerian democracy has improved greatly. The political culture is fast evolving, leading to electorates to make wise choice and vote for personalities instead of political parties. This is a good omen for our democracy. In Kaduna state, the ruling party suffered  humiliation  defeat having lost 3 senatorial seats and 14 members of house of representatives to opposition parties. Therefore, Kaduna’s shameful defeat did not come to many political observers as surprise. The state is being governed by astute technocrat. Governor Nasir Elrufai is not a local politician. Throughout his nearly eight years in the saddle, Elrufai has failed to carry local politicians along. It has been repeatedly said, all politics is local. This has never been in El-rufai’s political book. Besides, some of his policies are considered harsh and must have contributed to the sudden defeat of the party in Kaduna state.

  With the emergency of Tinubu as president-elect, the question begging for answer is: will the voting pattern changes in the forthcoming gubernatorial elections? It is on record, any party that won presidential election is expected to comfortably win majority of states governors. This has been the norm or tradition from time immemorial. With the commendable efforts of INEC which led to the conduct of free, fair and transparent elections, there is every tendency Nigerians will vote based on personalities and replicate what they did at the presidential and National assembly elections. However, there is also probability APC will win where it lost. Many states which are considered as “no go area” for the ruling party can safely fall back into their hands. For instance, APC may recover Lagos, Yobe and Katsina states which it lost to PDP and LP tsunami. PDP may also recover some south East and south-South States which is considered its strong hold but lost during the presidential elections’.  

 The next gubernatorial and state assembly elections will produce another surprise or shock outcomes. Whatever may be the results, our politicians should accept it in good faith. It is obvious, in any elections, there must be a winner and loser.

Ibrahim Mustapha Pambegua, Kaduna state. 08169056963.