During an
interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Minister of Works and
Housing,
Babatunde Fashola, revealed that the All Progressives Congress (APC)
was taken aback by the victory of the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate,
Peter Obi, in Lagos State during the February 25, 2023 presidential election.
Fashola, a former Lagos State governor and strong ally of the President-Elect,
Bola Tinubu, stated that his party conducted pre-election internal polls but
never released them, describing polls that predicted victory for Obi and Atiku
Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as “badly conducted”.
Fashola
further explained that the APC knew states where it had high chances of winning
and had concentrated its energy in those states. However, the party was
blindsided in some cases, such as in Lagos, where the opposition turned out
their voters and decimated the chances of Atiku Abubakar. Fashola admitted that
the LP’s victory in Lagos at the presidential poll surprised the APC, saying
that they were “blindsided” by it.
At the
February 25 poll, Obi polled 582,454 votes to trounce Tinub, who also served as
a former Lagos State governor, with 572,606 votes. However, Tinubu won the
highest total votes in the election and was declared the winner by the electoral
umpire. Tinubu won in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states and secured significant numbers
in several other states to claim the highest number of votes, with 8,794,726,
almost two million votes more than his closest rival, former Vice President
Atiku, who got 6,984,520 votes, while Obi polled 6,101,533.
Obi, a
former governor of Anambra State, won the polls in 11 states, including the
home state of the APC candidate — Lagos. He also came out tops in the nation’s
capital Abuja. Abubakar, like Tinubu, was victorious in 12 states. Former Kano
State Governor and candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu
Kwankwaso, finished fourth, claiming victory in his state — Kano. He secured
1,496,687 votes.
Fashola’s
interview shed some light on the internal workings of the APC during the 2023
presidential elections and highlighted the unexpected victory of the LP’s Peter
Obi in Lagos. Despite this setback, the APC’s Bola Tinubu emerged as the winner
of the presidential elections with a significant lead in the popular vote.
