Despite winning the governorship election last Saturday, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kaduna State has claimed that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rigged the election in seven local government areas (LGAs) in the state.
This comes barely 24 hours after PDP members in the state staged a protest on Thursday to demand that their candidate, Isah Ashiru, be declared the rightful winner of the March 18 governorship election in the state.
The APC candidate, Senator Uba Sani, was declared the winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), with 730,002 votes, while his closest rival, Ashiru, received 719,196 votes.
However, the state Secretary of the APC, Yahaya Pate, at a press conference on Friday, vowed to challenge the “electoral fraud” in court allegedly committed by the PDP.
Citing affected LGAs to include in Chikun, Kajuru, Soba, Makarfi, Ikara, Zangon Kataf and Kudan, Pate argued that the figures did not conform with the reality on the ground, especially the reported low turnout of voters on the election day.
Reviewing the outcome of the election, he alleged that their members and supporters were harassed and intimidated by “PDP thugs” on the day of the election, thereby paving the way for mutilation of results where the PDP allegedly knew that it was going to lose.
The APC, on the other hand, praised the people of Kaduna for electing Sani and other state and National Assembly members.
On Thursday, APC supporters took to the streets to express their displeasure with the election results.
The supporters, mostly women dressed in black, demonstrated at the Kaduna State Secretariat of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), accusing INEC of overturning their candidate’s victory in favor of Sani.