On March 24th, Abdullahi Ganduje was declared the winner of  the Kano State supplementary elections – you know, the elections that had to happen because the March 9th polls were declared inconclusive after Ganduje appeared likely to lose.

Anyway, while congratulatory bags stuffed with money are in order for the Governor, we’re looking beyond the victory to all the things we can learn from this incredibly hard to believe feat:

It doesn’t matter how unpopular you are, you only need 2 weeks to make thousands of people change their minds:

In the original governorship elections, Ganduje appeared to be headed for a certain loss with a 27 000  margin against the PDP’s Abba Kyari. And that was with one major polling unit unaccounted for.

 

The loss was so sure, his Deputy got arrested for attempting to em… sway votes in their favour.

 

That’s all irrelevant now however, as that gap was corrected,  with 1,033,695 million picking Ganduje over the less tainted Kabir Yusuf, who won a close 1,024,713 votes.

There’s nothing like a looming election loss to get you to do your job.

Doubt this?

 

Well how else would you explain Ganduje’s scrambling to fix all the wrongs in the Nasarawa polling unit, a major decider for victory in Kano state.

Our guy attempted to carry out 3 major projects : refuse evacuation, mass drilling of boreholes and the re-construction of roads about a week to the supplementary elections. Good thing he won though, he definitely has an incentive to finish these projects he started probably solely to sway votes in his favour — oh wait…

Don’t sweat the small stuff like multiple arrests and widespread violence during elections.

Voter attacks and routine disenfranchisement are just a small price to pay for the democracy practised in Kano state it would appear.

 

Don’t let the fact that at least 10 people were arrested and widespread violence assailed the supplementary elections should definitely not distract you from the fact that Ganduje won his elections (with a pending corruption charge on his back).

 

 

 

 

 

Now, in addition to our takeaways, we have just one question and it’s directed to the people directly responsible for Ganduje’s victory — is everything alright at home?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does re-electing a Governor that gave us  5 reasons — ON VIDEO — to not re-elect him seem like a wise idea?

 

 

 

 

How do you rationalise re-electing someone whose Deputy had to be placed at the back of a police car to stop him from tampering with already cast votes?

When you’re done answering that,  twenty marks to whoever can explain how an election that literally had to be suspended because there was so much violence and rigging on display, was eventually declared largely peaceful?

None of it makes sense, so I’ll be over here contemplating the requirements for a Schengen visa.

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