The supremacy battle between Governor Umar Ganduje, ex-governors Rabiu Kwankwaso and Ibrahim Shekarau could decide where the pendulum swings for or against any of the presidential candidates.
For the past 20 years, Buhari monopolized the votes in Kano. In 2011, Buhari under the Congress for Progressives Change (CPC) polled 1.6 million votes. Shekarau of the ANPP, was at that point the incumbent governor of Kano State.
In 2015, Buhari polled 1.903 million votes, while PDP polled 215,777 votes. In 2019, even with Kwankwaso in PDP, Buhari still polled 1.4 million votes, leaving Atiku Abubakar with 391,593 votes.
By 2016, Kwankwaso, who was in the Senate had a fallout with his successor, Ganduje and was forced to move to the PDP. In the 2019 election, both Ganduje and Shekarau teamed up against Kwankwaso but managed to win the governorship race with less than 10,000 votes.
However, during the 2019 governorship election, Ganduje won the election with a controversial margin of 8,982.
With Buhari not on the ballot for the first time in 20 years, presidential candidates are scheming to crack the Kano votes. As it appears, Buhari’s votes are non-transferable to anyone. When he won the 2019 election with a margin of over 1 million votes, two weeks after, Ganduje struggled to win the election with 8,982.
With data available with Native Reporters, Kano, which had 5.45 million voters in 2019 now has a total of 6.02 million.
The outgoing Governor Ganduje will definitely work for APC Presidential Candidate Tinubu, While Former Governor Shekarau and Kwankwaso to work for PDP and NNPP respectively.
APC may not get much votes as expected as son of the soil Kwankwaso is contesting for presidency in 2023.
Labour Party could get slim votes from Kano as the state structures are strongly headed by 3 political gladiators. Labour party’s hope is Kano elites and non-kano Indigenes.
2019 Kano data summary:
Kano had 5,391,581 registered voters, out of which 2,006,410 voters were accredited for the presidential election.
The result showed that the total votes cast was 1,964,751, out of which 73,617 votes were rejected. Valid votes were 1,891,134.
Buhari scored 1,464,768 (78.9 per cent) of the total votes cast to beat the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who polled 391,593 (21.1 per cent).
2019 election was won Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who claimed 15,191,847 (56%) while Atiku Abubakar of PDP received 11,262,978 (41%) of votes.
* Developing script