El-Rufai expresses surprise at APC’s loss in Edo election

• Says opinion polls showed APC would win

Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, expressed surprise at the loss his party APC suffered in the Edo governorship election at the weekend, saying he was optimistic up to three weeks to the election that APC would win.

He said opinion polls conducted had shown that the APC candidate, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, would win the election, adding that he didn’t know what went wrong in the last three weeks of the campaign.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday declared the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Governor Godwin Obaseki, winner of the keenly contested election.

INEC’s Returning Officer, Prof. Akpofure Rim-Rukeh, said Obaseki polled 307,955 votes to defeat his closest rival, Ize-Iyamu, who got 223,619 votes.

Commenting on the development, the Kaduna State governor, who spoke on Monday morning while featuring on Channels Television programme , said the election was “reasonably decent”.

El-Rufai said, “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.

“As you know, a large number of voters make up their minds in the last two weeks of the election. Many voters decide 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, that’s it. You can’t go into an election without the possibility of losing.”

According to him, “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 the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), was committed to free and fair elections.