APC candidate wins Kano supplementary election, NNPP rejects result

The All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Garba Gwarmai, has been declared the winner of the Ghari/Tsanyawa supplementary election in Kano State.

The Returning Officer, Professor Muhammad Waziri of Bayero University, announced on Sunday that Gwarmai won with 31,472 votes, defeating his closest rival, Yusuf Maigado of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), who scored 27,931 votes.

The supplementary election followed the earlier inconclusive poll in the constituency.

With a winning margin of 3,541 votes, Gwarmai’s triumph delivers a significant boost to the APC, further consolidating the party’s dominance in Kano State.

However, the NNPP in a statement by the state chairman of the party, Hashimu Dungurawa, rejected the result.

It reads, “The leadership of the New Nigeria People’s Party in Kano State has acknowledged the tremendous achievements recorded by the party in Kano on the re-run and by-elections at Tsanyawa/ Ghari and Shanono/Bagwai state constituencies respectively.

“While applauding the voters of the respective constituencies, the party wishes to inform the general public that the manipulations orchestrated against the candidate in Tsanyawa/Ghari, re-run election cannot be condoned.

“Therefore, the party rejects the election results of Tsanyawa/Ghari, which was declared at the INEC Headquarters in Kano, while cancelling entirely the ten (10) polling units that the Appeal court nullified and ordered for a fresh election.

“This is unacceptable and completely denying electorates their rights to vote, after they came out massively and casted their votes largely to the NNPP candidate,” Dungurawa said.

The NNPP chairman maintained that the election was conducted peacefully in Ghari Local Government Area at the ten polling units; but in a way of manipulation by some unpatriotic politicians who connived with INEC officials, the APC candidate was declared as the winner.

“In ideal circumstance, elections supposed to be declared at the collation centre within the constituency, but INEC decided to make the declaration at its headquarters at the state capital which gave room for the unpatriotic politicians to connive with INEC and cancelled all the polling units in contention and revert back to the old election results that was challenged at the court and the court decided in favour of the NNPP; where it said election re-run should be conducted, hence, directed the INEC to do the re-run on the ten polling units.

“This issue is the true show of unpatriotic actions and disenfranchisement of the electorates and stealing of their mandate, it also discredited the image of the highest electoral body which is INEC,” the statement said.