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Buhari will win again without nPDP: El-Rufai
News & Trends •
the governor recommended the adoption of e-voting in future elections at both federal and state levels as a panacea to election frauds in the country1 governor nasir el-rufai of kaduna state has dismissed the fears that buharis electoral value would diminish if the aggrieved members of the npdp pull out of the ruling all progressives congress government1 i dont agree and 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 dont think amaechi is part of them1 so lets 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 kano1 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 easily1 kano is already in the bag i mean if you saw the crowd that welcome the president without the former governor kwankwaso kano has always been the presidents base1 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 into1 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 them1 el-rufai visited the state house on tuesday to update president buhari on the outcome of last saturdays local government elections in his state and the use of electronic voting system during the exercise1 it was the first time a state adopted the use of electronic machines to conduct elections in nigeria1 el-rufai told journalists that he also used the opportunity to welcome the president from his recent trips to america and london1 in an interview with state house correspondents in abuja on tuesday el-rufai said president buhari would be re-elected with or without the threatening former pdp members1 he expressed the readiness of the kaduna state government to give out the machines on mutually acceptable terms to those state governments that were yet to conduct local government elections in their states1 absolutely i recommend it highly to everyone i have already offered to my colleagues state governors that are yet to conduct local government elections that they can come to kaduna and we can give them the machines on mutually acceptable terms1 all you will need is to change the software it will have the logo of the state and the number of parties active in the state they can use it. it is easy1 at federal level i will recommend it as well because with the card reader and the electronic voting machine the era of rigging elections is almost over and i think that is when people will have confidence in the process and will come out enmass to vote for their leaders1 having said that i know we have been working on this for about one year before we got to where we are. although it is possible for inec to do it it will be logistically difficult1 but nothing stops them from trying if the resources are available. because the machines have already been manufactured the designs are there you only need to place the orders to the chinese and im sure they will deliver them in no time1 el-rufai also dismissed the assertion that the use of e-voting was against the electoral act saying that i dont agree with that1 there is an amendment to the electoral act that president jonathan signed a few days before he left office which legitimizes the use of the card reader and other electronic systems for voting1 so in my view the current electoral act has provision for the electoral voting1 but that is not even what we used in kaduna. in kaduna we enacted our own electoral law that made provision for the electronic voting machine and card reader everything was totally legitimized and passed by our state house of assembly and i think every state can do the same he said1 he added that the current legal framework allowed the use of electronic voting machines1