As both the ruling All Progressives Congress,(APC), and the main opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), continue to take stock of the just concluded governorship election in Edo State, Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, on Monday declared the earlier opinion polls conducted ahead favoured the APC to win the election convincingly.
The Kaduna State governor, who spoke on Monday morning while featuring on Channels Television, stated that the Saturday’s election was reasonably decent but could not explain what actually happened in the past three weeks for the APC candidate, Pastor Osagie Ize-iyamu to have lost the poll to the incumbent, Governor Godwin Obaseki.
He stated that based on the outcome of the opinion polls, he was optimistic till up to three weeks ago that his party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC) would win the governorship election.
According to him, “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.
ALSO READ: Lagos releases resumption dates for 2020/2021 school session
“As you know, a large number of voters make up their minds in the last two weeks of the election. Many voters decide that 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 the Edo election, that’s it. You can’t go into an election without the possibility of losing.
“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 regime of President Muhammadu Buhari was committed to free and fair elections which clearly played on Saturday.
He said that the President followed it up by congratulating the winner of the poll, Governor Obaseki on his re-election shortly after INEC declared him as the winner.
and then