DAKINGARI WINS KEBBI RE-RUN GUBER POLL

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday declared Alhaji Saidu Dakingari of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the winner of the Kebbi re-run governorship election held last Saturday.

The Returning Officer, Prof. Suleiman Bilbis, said Dakingari scored 875, 492 votes to beat his Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) rival, Alhaji Abubakar Abubakar, who scored 17, 918 votes.

Bilbis, the deputy vice chancellor of Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto, also announced that the ACN candidate, Alhaji Kabiru Tanimu, scored 4, 555 votes to place third. No fewer than 15 political parties, including the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), whose candidate, Alhaji Suleiman Musa Argungu, withdrew from the race 24 hours before the election.

Ten days earlier, candidates of CPC and ACN had withdrawn from the race and joined PDP.

The election was necessitated by the nullification of the victory of Dakingari in the 2011 general election by the Supreme Court following a petition by the CPC candidate, Abubakar. CPC had announced its boycott of the election because of the refusal of INEC to allow it to field a replacement for Abubakar.

The CPC had accepted defeat in last Saturday's re-run governorship election and blamed its poor performance on intra-party crisis. 'The CPC has no problem with the result and shall not contest it in any court,'' the party Secretary, Alhaji Bashir Matawalle, said in reaction to the outcome of the election.   'The controversy over CPC's withdrawal from last Saturday's governorship re-run election should not be blamed on INEC because the CPC did not put its house in order,'' Matawalle added.

The party scribe decried the confusion in the party and pointed out that the withdrawal of CPC from the race was not formally communicated to INEC, while the state chapter of the party was not aware of the decision.

The ANPP candidate, Alhaji Suleiman Agungu, however, dismissed the re-run election as a sham.  'Going by the low turnout of voters, the general apathy to the exercise and the lopsided nature of the results, it is clear that the election did not meet expected standards'' he said.

Meanwhile, Dakingari, the governor-elect, said the fresh mandate he received   was an indication of his acceptance by the people of Kebbi. Malam Alhassan Musa, the media adviser to Dakingari, said yesterday the new mandate was an indication of the popularity of the governor-elect's  policies and programmes over the years.

He promised to bring the opposition on board in efforts to develop the state.