Former spokesman to former president Goodluck Jonathan, Ima Niboro, has attempted to explain why Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) lost Saturday’s presidential election to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Niboro also explained why Senate President, Bukola Sataki, Senator Godswill Akpabio and ex-governor Emmanuel Uduaghan also lost their senatorial elections. He said the political structures of their respective constituencies did not favour them in last Saturday’s election.
Reacting to the declaration of Buhari as winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the immediate past managing director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), yesterday, told newsmen that APC’s victory was inevitable as much as an Atiku’s victory was statistically impossible.
The Director General of the APC Door-to-Door Campaign in Delta State, who congratulated the president on his victory, pointed out that as long as politics thrives on structures and not on day dreams and wishful thinking, it was structurally impossible for the PDP candidate to oust the sitting APC president.
“As at the day of the elections, APC was in control of 22 states, while the PDP controlled 13 and APGA, one. No governor would surrender his state to the opposition because the template of the presidential elections would be the same with the coming gubernatorial elections. Even if the governor is not on the ballot, he is sponsoring a successor. He will fight tooth and nail to deliver his party in all the elections,” Niboro said. He said the votes in the presidential elections were consistent with the structural realities of Nigeria’s party politics, adding that Sokoto and Gombe went to the APC because the structures that emplaced those PDP governors were APC, in content and character.
