The national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has congratulated the Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, on his re-election for another term of four years.
This was contained in a statement by the chairman of the APC national caretaker committee, Mai Mala Buni, on Monday.
The statement was released a few hours after Buni and the chairman of the partys governorship election campaign for Edo State, Abdullahi Ganduje, met with the President Muhammadu Buhari behind closed doors.
It was titled Edo State Governorship Election: Victory for Democracy and personally signed by Buni.
Buni, in the statement, described the election as peaceful, adding that its outcome represented a victory for Nigerias democracy.
He explained that some problems within APC worked against the party and its candidate in the just-concluded election.
The governor subsequently warned against disunity in the party.
Meanwhile, Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, said he was optimistic up to three weeks ago that APC would win the Edo State governorship election.
El-Rufai on Monday expressed shock at the election result because, according to him, opinion polls before the election indicated a win for the APC and its candidate, Osagie Ize-Iyamu.
The governor, who spoke on Monday morning while featuring on Channels Television, said the election was reasonably decent.
He said, We (APC) would have loved to win and quite frankly, I was optimistic up to three weeks ago; the polls indicated that we were going to win. I dont know what happened in the last three weeks of the campaign.
As you know, a large number of voters make up their minds in the last two weeks of the election. Many voters decide no matter what happens, this is how I am voting but most people want to wait and make up their minds in the last two weeks.
Three weeks ago, the polls clearly showed that APC was going to win but the result came out differently from what we expected. Obaseki has won, thats it. You cant go into an election without the possibility of losing.
The election was reasonably decent. We were all worried about violence but there was very little violence or none at all.
But former governor of Imo State, Senator Rochas Okorocha, described the loss of APC in the Edo State governorship election as peoples revolution against injustice.
Okorocha who is the senator representing Imo West Senatorial Zone, had on Sunday while reacting to the outcome of the Edo governorship election, insisted that APCs loss was the masses revolution against injustice.
He said The truth is, what I have been talking about has come to play. If PDP wins in Edo, I will not congratulate the PDP; I will congratulate the Edo people.
I congratulate them for standing up against injustice because the people that voted for Obaseki are not only PDP, even people in the APC voted for him. They want to stand up for injustice. Edo people are not docile, they know what they want and how they want it.
