Abia State governor-elect, Alex Otti, has said he won election even before the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, joined the party.

Otti said this in an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today
He said, “In 2015 when I ran under APGA, there was no Peter Obi. And we have it on our record that I won that election. At the time we were joining Labour Party, Peter Obi had not joined. It took about a week before called me and said that he purchased the presidential nomination form and he was coming to Labour Party.

“We were prepared to fight the way we fought in 2015. The votes we garnered in Abia could have been had but maybe the margin could have been smaller. That is why it’s always good to acknowledge Peter Obi. He came to Abia about four times to campaign for us.

“I think he had done well for us. That is why even the first election out of the eight House of Representatives seats we took six and sent some people on permanent retirement.

“Peter Obi is a great addition to our campaign, but I can tell you that we won an election before in Abia without him.”

poncedeleon:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr-zQ8IlDZc

The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has been declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the last Saturday presidential election in Kogi state.

The INEC returning officer, Professor Wahab Egbenwole, declared in Lokoja on Tuesday that Tinubu scored 240,751votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of PDP who got 145,104 votes.


Also, he said the candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, came third with 56,217 votes
He added that out of 484,884 voters who were accredited for the election in the state, 476,038 cast their votes, and that 456,790 votes were recorded as valid votes while 19,248 votes were rejected in the process.

Tinubu won in 15 local governments: Mopa/Muro, Kogi, Kabba Bunu, Ijumu, Igala/ Mela and Yagba West, Olamaboro, Ofu ,Yagba East, Dekina, Ankpa, including Lokoja, Okene and dah and Ajaokuta, While Atiku won in six local governments of the state: Ogori Magogo, Adavi, Bassa, Ibaji, Okehi and Omala.

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ibrahim Shekarau, has been declared winner of the 2023 Kano Central Senatorial District election under the New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP).

Shekarau, a sitting Senator was in NNPP and was nominated to vie for the senatorial position under its platform.

However, before the election, he announced his defection from the NNPP and abandoned his Senatorial ambition to join PDP.

But the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) later insisted that it still recognizes him as the legitimate NNPP candidate, even though the party replaced him with another candidate, Rufa’i Sani Hanga.

Shekarau, who is going to the red chamber for the second time was declared by the returning officer of the Senatorial district, Professor Tijjani Hassan Darma.


According to INEC, Shekarau polled 456,787 votes to defeat the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Alhaji Abdulkarim Abdussalam Zaura, who polled 168, 677 votes.

Oloki:
Insightful.
I think what I learnt from the writeup is that we shouldn't be too emotional when we find ourselves in a tight corner as that can be used against us.
Self control is the name of the game called politics

Kwankwaso’s Superhuman Restraint During Arise TV Interview

By Farooq Kperogi

A few days ago on Twitter, I happened upon an interview that Arise TV’s Dr. Reuben Abati had with Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso that caused me to both laugh hysterically and stand in awe of Kwankwaso’s surprisingly out-of-this-world emotional self-control.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the video again. Essentially, Abati said something to the effect that some well-known names in the country (he meant in the North but didn’t say so explicitly) trace immediate ancestral and familial roots to countries outside Nigeria. He was probably talking about the Baba-Ahmed family whose father migrated to Zaria from Mauritania. Abati asked if Kwankwaso was one of such people.

You could see, almost touch even, the fury that welled up in Kwankwaso. But he self-consciously restrained himself and curtly said he is Nigerian and that his parents were also Nigerian. Then Abati pivoted to a long-standing, if ridiculous, whispering campaign in Kano that alleges that Kwankwaso is actually an Igbo man, that his last name is a corruption of “Okonkwo and Sons,” the putative name of a company an Igbo man established in colonial Kano.

Abati asked Kwankwaso if there was any truth to this speculation. Kwankwaso's visage and body language betrayed a man who was bottling a sensation of raw rage and disgust. But his response was admirably measured and restrained. He said he had no problem with, and in fact welcomed, being mistaken for a member of any ethnic group in Nigeria.

He used the opportunity of the question to sound commendably broadminded and pan-Nigerian. It was a golden opportunity for a presidential candidate struggling to gain traction outside Kano. It was also a great segue to his forceful but curt denial about being descended from a non-Nigerian parentage.

Most politicians in Kwankwaso’s shoes would have lost it. Here’s why.

The notion that the town of Kwankwaso was founded by an Igbo man called Felix Okonkwo in 1927 started as a joke. Political jokes like that used to be—still are—common in Kano. For example, when Alhaji Abubakar Rimi campaigned for Olu Falae in Kano in the early 1990s, he invented a harmless, humorous fib to recommend and legitimize him to Kano voters.

He said Olu Falae was a Kano man who was originally known as Auwalu Falalu but that when his parents migrated to Yoruba land, Yoruba people couldn’t pronounce his name correctly and corrupted it to Olu Falae.

Most people got a kick out of the fib and understood it in the tradition of campaign jokes in Kano. I don’t remember the campaign fib that was told about Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, but it had Baba Sirajo (father of Sirajo) in it, and it was approbatory.

Kwankwaso had the misfortune of being at the receiving end of a negative campaign fib, which somehow took on a life of its own outside Kano. Now a lot of people actually believe that Rabiu Kwankwaso is an Igbo man!

The truth is that the town of Kwankwaso has existed— and has been known by its current name— before Nigeria was formally constituted and so couldn’t possibly have been founded by a Felix Okonkwo in 1927.

The town’s first traditional ruler, according to historical records, was known as Mamman Danhawa, and he ruled from 1808 until 1842. The formal colonization of northern Nigeria started on January 1, 1897.

Rabiu Kwankwaso is descended from the Kwankwaso royal family. In fact, his father, Alhaji Musa Sale Kwankwaso, who died in 2020 at the age of 93, was the village head of Kwankwaso. The formal title of the royal head of the town is “Sarkin Fulanin Kwankwaso,” which is Hausa for the king of the Fulani of Kwankwaso.

That tells you that Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso is ethnically Fulani, not the Igbo son of an Okonkwo. Of course, like most Fulani people in the Northwest, he is culturally, linguistically and, for all intents and purposes, Hausa.

But I think the historical fact that lent some credibility to the idea that Kwankwaso was founded by an Igbo man is that it became a railway town between 1910 and 1916. Like most railway towns, it’s more ethnically diverse than most towns of its size in the North.

Finally, what Abati did was good journalism. Our job as journalists is to rupture the composure of politicians, to so rile them up that they trip up and say things that are unscripted and therefore newsworthy. Had Kwankwaso taken the bait and exploded in anger at being called a non-Nigerian or an Igbo man, that would have dominated the news cycle and got Arise TV millions of eyeballs. Because that didn’t happen, most people are not aware of the interview.

Femi Fani-Kayode who had a hissy fit when a Daily Trust reporter by the name of Eyo Charles asked him who was “bankrolling” his tour of PDP states in 2020 would do well to consult Kwankwaso about emotional self-control in the heat of intentional, headline-seeking, eyeball-scouting journalistic provocation.

As I pointed out in my August 26, 2020, article titled “Fani-Kayode: All Great Journalists Are ‘Rude’,” a good interviewer causes politicians to have a meltdown so they can lose their guard and involuntarily let out the truth. “Smart politicians know this. Instead of allowing themselves to be immobilized by impotent anger, they respond to high-pressure, ‘embarrassing’ questions with poise, and disarm adversarial reporters with humility, grace, and gentleness,” I wrote.

Tochj:

Because they like wetin im dey do.

Coldsperm:
They should bring him back to Naija asap. No time to waste time.