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Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has said he was optimistic that his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) would win the Edo State governorship election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on Sunday declared the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Governor Godwin Obaseki, winner of the keenly contested election.
INEC’s Returning Officer, Prof. Akpofure Rim-Rukeh, said Obaseki polled 307,955 votes to defeat his closest rival, APC’s Osagie Ize-Iyamu, who got 223,619 votes.
El-Rufai, who spoke on Monday morning while featuring on Channels Television, revealed that opinion polls conducted had shown that the APC candidate, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, would win the election, adding that he didn’t know what went wrong in the last three weeks of the campaign, adding that the election was “reasonably decent.”
“We (APC) would have loved to win and quite frankly, I was optimistic up to three weeks ago; the polls indicated that we were going to win. I don’t know what happened in the last three weeks of the campaign.
“As you know, a large number of voters make up their minds in the last two weeks of the election. Many voters decide no matter what happens, this is how I am voting but most people want to wait and make up their minds in the last two weeks.
“Three weeks ago, the polls clearly showed that APC was going to win but the result came out differently from what we expected.
“Obaseki has won, that’s it. You can’t go into an election without the possibility of losing,” El-Rufai said.
He added: “The election was reasonably decent. We were all worried about violence but there was very little violence or none at all.”
The governor also stressed that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari was committed to free and fair elections.