TELL Magazine

The All Progressives Congress, APC has recorded a landslide victory in Kwara State in the March 9, governorship and state assembly elections. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, candidate of the APC won the governorship election by defeating Abdulrasaq Atunwa of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. He scored 331,546 against the PDP candidate who scored 114,754 votes.

The margin of 216,792 votes over the PDP candidate was not the only victory that APC had, it also got all the 24 seats in the State House of Assembly.

It is not clear why the PDP did not send its agents to the state collation centre in Ilorin, where the winner was declared.

The victory by the APC is seen largely as the humbling of the Saraki political dynasty. The late Olusola Saraki, father of Bukola Saraki, the Senate president had held sway in the state as the sole political godfather until shortly before his demise. And even that time it was Bukola, his son who perhaps studying the turn of events decided to halt the slide. The Senate president fell out with the leadership of the APC and defected alongside other leaders, returning to the PDP, from where he had defected pre-2015 election to give support to the then newly formed coalition of parties that evolved to APC to defeat the incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan. The older Saraki was Senate leader during the second republic.