Declare Ganduje, Plunge Kano Into Crisis – Abba Yusuf As Kwankwaso Threatens Civil Disobedience

The PDP gubernatorial candidate for Kano State, Engineer Abba Kabir Yusuf is threatening that declaring Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje as the winner of yesterday’s rerun will plunge Kano into an unprecedented political crisis. Any such attempt by what he calls the already compromised INEC officials would also be resisted, said Sanusi Bature Dawakin-Tofa, his spokesperson.

The candidate is calling on security agencies to refrain from being partisan by supporting the ruling party to aid and abate crisis. “We urge all relevant stakeholders at State and Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, call the attention of INEC on the need to immediately declare Abba Kabir Yusuf as the winner of the election, being the candidate with the highest votes in the just concluded election, said the statement.

While recognizing and appreciating his supporters who participated in the Kano Rerun elections and who are credited with giving victory to the People Democratic Party, the candidate is speaking to how unfortunate it is to have witnessed what he is calling a gang up against democracy by the trio of the ruling APC, INEC and the Security agencies “who connived … to orchestrate broad day light robbery of the People’s mandate”.

In a view that tallies with the PDP governorship candidate’s, the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) is calling on INEC to discountenance the supplementary elections in Kano State and return to status quo prior to the March 23^rd, 2019, arguing that anything short of that will be setting a very dangerous precedence where the use of force to capture electoral gain will become the rule rather than the exception. It is condemning in totality what it calls the open display of lawlessness and rascality involving massive deployment of hoodlums in the conduct of supplementary gubernatorial elections. The NGO said in a statement early Sunday evening that the result translates to a sabotage of electoral process and loss of lives in Kano state. Its claim of loss of lives runs contrary to that of the police.

“While an election constitutes a formal citizenry decision-making process by which a population chooses a credible individual to hold public office, we find it disturbing that citizens’ choices and decisions were largely influenced and determined by high incidences of vote-buying facilitated by hoodlums and party agents, vote rigging and intimidations from various political parties in several Local Government Areas”, said CISLAC, a claim which is very similar to the situation in Benue State

The NGO is worried by two main conditions. One is the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agents to continue with the election despite reported outcries and anticipated threat to peaceful electoral process as evident in actions in some polling centres which it says constitute a total breach of Section 26 (1) of the Electoral Act which calls for immediate postponement of elections in such circumstances. Secondly, it is expressing surprise that even with the deployment of highly placed police personnel, the situation could not be better managed. “The inability of the police to manage the situation leading to widespread violence and unchecked intimidation of voters is highly disappointing”, said CISLAC.

Additionally, CISLAC which has several observer statuses is saying it is aware of “the arrogant and unchecked display of badges by party agents and supervisors in many polling centres as an indication of their preferred political party—APC or PDP and outright prevention of photographic evidence which raise suspicion of rigging as extensively reported and narrated by independent observers”.

Claiming that four presiding officers from Nasarawa Local Government Area of the state made away with the result of election to an undisclosed location, it says that has further thrown the credibility of the election into question in support of its call for discountenance of the supplementary elections.

Meanwhile, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwnkwaso has been reported to have said that civil obedience is how his group has chosen to protest the the results of the gubernatorial election in Kano State. That would mean all citizens who feel aggrieved will camp at the State Office of the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) at Hajj Camp. What happens thereafter is anybody’s guess.

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