Former Kano State Governor and National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Abdullahi Umar Gnaduje, has revealed the mistakes made by Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf and presidential candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso in the run up to the March 18 governorship election which the APC used to nail them at the Tribunal and Appeal Court.
During the election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Yusuf winner but the APC rejected the result and headed for the State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal which voided 165,663 votes for Yusuf on the grounds that the ballot papers were not signed or stamped by INEC.
Yusuf’s votes were then reduced to 853,939 while those of the candidate of the APC, Nasir Ganuwa, stood at 890,705, with the tribunal declaring that Ganuwa was the authentic winner of the election.
Not satisfied with the verdict, Yusuf and the NNPP challenged the ruling at the Appeal Court but at its seating last Friday, the appellate court upheld the ruling of the tribunal, holding that Yusuf was not a member of NNPP at the time he contested.
While reacting to the Appeal Court judgment during an interaction with party supporters in Kano on Saturday, Ganduje said the APC knew the mistakes Yusuf, Kwankwaso and NNPP made and waited till the right time to use them against the governor.
Ganduje noted that Yusuf who was a member of the PDP had defected to the NNPP alongside his political godfather, Kwankwaso in 2022 without taking note of the fact that INEC had closed acceptance of nomination forms when they joined the NNPP.
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“They were in PDP and when the crisis heated up and they were punched repeatedly, they left the party and started groping for a platform,” Ganduje said, noting that Kwankwaso and his allies were so desperate that they did not notice the INEC lacuna.
“Unfortunately, they ran into a political party symbolizing fruits. They were given tickets because their leader was daydreaming; their leader was ambitious to be the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but he was frightened,” he continued.
“And because they desperately wanted a governor in Kano State, the party gave them a ticket to contest. But they made a serious blunder because when they joined the party, INEC had closed submission of nomination forms.
“But they were blind and uneducated. They went into the ring without making careful observation of this. They did not know that we laid in wait. We took the file, submitted it to Dr. Nasiru Yusuf Gwuna and told him to hold it tight.
“When we filed a petition at the Kano governorship election tribunal, we told the court that they were not fielded by the party. We told the court that when INEC closed accepting names of candidates, they did not join the party,” Ganduje said.