Admin l Saturday, September 04, 2021
KADUNA, Nigeria – Dividends of electronic voting today emerged in Unit 001 Ungwar Sarki, Kaduna North Local Government, when Mallam Nasir el-Rufai lost the local government election in his unit to the opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party(PDP).
The development might be painful to the governor, but he will nevertheless go down in history as the only governor to have allowed the will of the people to prevail during his time as governor, via the electronic voting, which Nigerian lawmakers detests for lack of popularity in the locality.
El-Rufai voted at his polling Unit 001 Ungwar Sarki, Kaduna North local government area where he said his target was not to win all the polls but to improve the voting process using the Electronic Voting Machine.
While voting earlier, El Rufai had said: “We are not going to behave like other parties or other state government of the ruling party. We will allow the people of Kaduna State to elect who they want.
“We do not have to win everywhere, though we have worked for the people of Kaduna State, they have seen our foot print, the government and the local government everywhere, they have seen and we are confident that all reasonable minded people will vote for our party, our candidate because they know we are committed to the welfare of the people”.
“We don’t believe in cheating, we don’t believe in rigging election but also we don’t believe that other people should cheat us. And that is why we encouraged SIECOM to come up with a very improved system and am impressed with the whole thing.
“Technology is key to minimising cheating in election, unless we have credible election we can never have good leaders, accountable leaders and that is why we are committed, even if it means we are going to lose in some areas, this is democracy, it is a gradual process.”
According to the result announced by Muhammad Sani, Presiding Officer of the Unit, El-Rufai’s All Progressives Congress (APC) polled 62 votes in the chairmanship election while Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 86 votes out of the 159 votes cast. In the councillorship election, APC polled 53 votes while PDP polled 100 votes out of 162 total votes cast.
