(El Rufai’s campaign at Kwoi,Jaba LG ,Kaduna state .Photo credit: tweet @omojuwa)
It was an occasion for issuing warning to the PDP against plans to falsify the results of the upcoming election in Southern Kaduna on Wednesday when the governorship candidate of APC, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, and other party officials addressed a mammoth crowd that attended the party’s campaign rally in Kafanchan, headquarters of Jemaa local government area of Kaduna State.
The event which took place at Old Stadium was attended by both politicians and other stakeholders who are indigenes of the LGA. As early as 10 am the rally had begun with the convoy of the APC campaign team moving through towns and villages in the LGA before it terminated at the stadium. A few of the personalities who spoke at the event included the APC deputy governorship candidate, Mr Yusuf Barnabas Bala Bantex; Chairman of the party in the LGA, Hon. John Gambo Kanufi; the Director-General of the APC Campaign Organization, Mr Ben Dalhatu Kure; APC Zonal Women Leader, Rebecca Barde; the senatorial candidate for Zone 1, Mallam Sulaiman Hunkuyi, and several others.
One point they all acknowledged was that the vote of the people of Southern Kaduna was a decider in most elections and that the people had been cheated of their votes in the past by the party in power. The speakers emphasized that PDP had used the people of Southern Kaduna to achieve its objectives long enough, and it was high time the party realized that the people of the area were no longer ready to be used to achieve victory during elections and then dumped.
Citing the comments that the APC deputy governorship candidate, Bala Bantex, made to the effect that the people of Southern Kaduna had had enough of the lies and maltreatment that the PDP had subjected them to in the last 16 years, El-Rufai, while addressing the people said he would like to advise the PDP for the purpose of the upcoming elections.
“I want to give PDP an advice,” he said. “This is because I have known Bala Bantex for close to 40 years, but I have never heard him speak so passionately the way he did until today. So the advise I will give PDP is this: If they have good sense, they shouldn’t push him to the wall. PDP has pushed Bantex to the wall. The advice I will give them is that they should not enter Zone 3 (Southern Kaduna) again, the APC candidate said with apparent reference to the penchant of PDP to rig election results from the area in its favour. He said the ruling party should go somewhere else where it would be possible for it to perpetrate its scheme. “They should go somewhere else. This is because the things I heard him (Bala Bantex) say today I had never heard him speak that way before. Then after he spoke, I saw tears rolling down his face. It is because of the things that his people in Southern Kaduna have been going through as a result of what Nigeria as a nation and Kaduna State have caused to happen to them. At the time Gen. Buhari shed tears in 2011 the PDP were laughing; they said he did not have a strong mind. But that was not because of lack of strong mind; it was because of the sympathy he had for the condition of the people of this nation. So I tell the current governor of Kaduna State that it is time he goes home and pack his bags.”
While he made his public declaration to leave PDP for APC at the event, a member of the PDP, Ambassador Joshua, who decamped with 2,000 of his PDP supporters said that in the past he had come to ask the people of the area to support PDP. But after 16 years of seeing no benefits for the people he had decided to decamp. “We came to you people and we said, let’s go through this door with PDP, but for sixteen years we have been in trouble,” Joshua said. “They have dealt with us ruthlessly. We have nothing to show for the relationship. We have been wasting our votes for 16 years by voting PDP, because even our roads they did not repair; is this a government? We have nothing to show: No roads, no hospitals, no good schools. If anyone that is sick leaves the house, before he gets to hospitals, he is dead. By myself I built a clinic for you in this town, the government that has refused to build a hospital for you, is that a government?”
Other speakers at the event pointed out that it was time that the people of Southern Kaduna left a party that had been using lies to divide the people of the state and vote for the party led by honest people who were ready to bring about the needed change.
