Hunkuyi: Presidential poll may lead to run-off
Speaking with Journalists in Kaduna on Wednesday, Kaduna governorship candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi said with the ethnic and religious factors at play, it may be difficult for any of the presidential candidates to secure 25 percent votes in 25 States on the first ballot. And as such no political party should be written off.
According to him: “It does not appear any party today in Nigeria, including NNPP may make it in the first election. There might have to be a run-off. Because the law requires some scores from the total votes cast minimum, in a required minimum number of states apart from simple majority scored. I feel no one party, no one candidate may be able to make it and that is why the laws of elections permit for a re-run.
“So, for anyone to say because NNPP may not make it, which party then may make it? Am talking from the background of the politics in Nigeria today. You see PDP and APC as the biggest of them all, but try to plot the graph, and when you do it, try to do it dispassionately. We have 36 states and to win the election, you need 25 percent of the votes in a minimum of 25 states. So, go ahead and count.
“If you are casting 100 votes, then 25 percent would mean 25 votes of the 100 votes. But now, you have the APC, PDP, NNPP, Labour Party and other smaller parties. Nobody can arrogate to himself, if you take a hundred votes say in Lagos, yes, you can say maybe two parties may not get 25 percent, maybe three parties may not get it and if you start going round, you will see that two, three parties may not likely get the 25 per cent in more than 10 states.
“Come back to APC itself, go to the East, plot the graph, come back to the North, plot the graph. A politician leaves his window open because he talks to every citizen because every citizen is entitled to a vote. If there will likely be a run-off, the strongest may require the weakest, the weakest may do with the strongest or choose to do with the middle cadre.
“It is a complex arithmetic. Nobody will just close its own door and sit in his own house and become a lsland not this polity, not this 2023 election. If Kwankwaso wants to win the election, he may have to fraternise whether he likes it or not.”
(Nation)
