Director of Strategic Communications, President Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organisation, Festus Keyamo, SAN, has said that the latest defections by some National Assembly members and the Governor of Benue State will not harm the re-election of President (Muhammadu) Buhari in the 2019 general elections.
In his analysis, Keyamo strongly believes Buhari will win landslide come to the 2019 general elections.
His words: “The President won with large margins in the past in some States without the support of majority of the politicians from those States who moved recently to join the opposition party. Also, we are all witnessing the significant gains Mr. President is making in several places where he lost in the past, notably in the south-south and south-east.
From the demographics we have now, the historic figures and the present realities that we know, these defections will have little or no impact on the chances of Mr. President’s re-election.
1. THE EFFECT OF DEFECTIONS ON THE TWELVE STATES CONSISTENTLY WON BY THE PRESIDENT.
The following twelve States, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Yobe and Niger, with over 30 million registered voters, are States the President had consistently won with considerable large margins in past elections, especially in 2011 and 2015. This was achieved despite the fact that most of those States were being controlled by political parties other than his own.
In 2011, when the President was in CPC (Congress for Progressive Change), despite being States with sitting opposition Governors, National Assembly Members, State Assembly Members and Local Government Chairmen, the President posted close to eleven million votes against all odds, defeating all his rivals in these twelve States mentioned above.
In 2015 despite the majority of these States being in opposition after the merger that formed the APC, the President posted close to eleven million votes again in these States with PDP not scoring up to twenty percent of the votes in most of these States. It is instructive that in these election cycles there were presidential candidates of Northern extraction (e.g. Shekarau and Ribadu in 2011). Besides, Kaduna had a sitting Vice President in both elections.
As we can see, any defection within these States would have little or no consequence on President Muhammadu Buhari’s chances as he had always won those States, irrespective of the Party in power in those States. For example in the much-touted Kano, in the 2011 Presidential election, President Buhari scored One Million, Six Hundred and Twenty Four Thousand, Five Hundred and Forty Three (1,624,543) votes as CPC candidate, while in 2015, he had 1,903,999 One Million, Nine Hundred and Three Thousand, Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine (1,903,999) votes as APC candidate. The vote difference of about Two Hundred and Eighty Thousand (280,000) votes may be attributed to elements of ANPP (All Nigeria Peoples Party), negligible ACN (Action Congress of Nigeria) and Senator Kwakwanso, then Governor of the State that came into APC.
Today, the President’s popularity in these States has increased due to the fight against Boko Haram which has been largely successful. So, he should expect more votes from these strongholds.”