Buhari’ll win without nPDP – El-Rufai

Governor Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna state has said that President Muhammadu Buhari would win the 2019 presidential election even if members of the new PDP quit the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Fielding questions from State House correspondents yesterday after briefing the President on the outcome of the local government election in the state, El-Rufai said the group had no strength that would affect chances of the President during elections.
He said since 2003, the President had been winning elections in Kwara, Adamawa, Kano and Sokoto states where most of the nPDP members hail from. “I want to go back to 2003. What are we talking about? Who are these new PDP people that are threatening? This is Kwara, Kano, Sokoto, Adamawa, Rivers, but I don’t think Amaechi is part of them.
So, let’s take these four states, go back to 2003 and check. Buhari then under ANPP won in all these four states. Go back to 2007, Buhari won in these four states. “Even when Shakarau was running as a presidential candidate in 2011, Buhari defeated him in Kano. And, I have no doubt in my mind that even if the people threatening to leave, leave, it will have absolutely no impact on the presidential elections, the president will win Sokoto, Kwara and Adamawa easily. Kano is already in the bag, I mean if you saw the crowd that welcomed the president without the former governor Kwanasho, Kano has always been the president’s base.
“To me that is not the issue, the issue is that they have written, they have expressed grievances, some of the grievances are legitimate and should be looked into. But to threaten to leave the party is neither here nor there. If they are honest with themselves they know that President Buhari will win those states with or without them. But if you have a grievance, we are a party and politics is a game of addition not subtraction, so we don’t want to lose anyone,” he said. He said, however, the grievances of the group should be looked into with a view to accommodating them as “politics is a game of addition, not subtraction.”

 

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