Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has said 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.
The former Lagos State governor, disclosed this during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics on Sunday.
He said the Labour Party turned its voters on in Lagos and decimated the chances of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The strong ally of the President-Elect, Bola Tinubu also said his party, the APC conducted pre-election internal polls but never released it, describing polls that predicted victory for Obi and Atiku as “badly conducted”.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who headed the Election Planning Directorate of the Tinubu-Shettima campaign, said his party knew states where it had high chances of winning and had concentrated its energy in those states.
However, Fashola said his party was blindsided in some cases. “In some cases, you get blindsided. We were blindsided in Lagos because the opposition turned out their voters there,” he said.
“And you also saw that a party that has been competitive for 24 years, the umbrella party, suddenly disappeared. It showed that their support base has shifted.”
Asked whether LP’s victory in Lagos at the presidential poll surprised the APC, he said, “Yeah, blindsided us, without a doubt. They turned out their voters and in the subsequent gubernatorial election, we turned out our voters.”
At the February 25 poll, Obi polled 582,454 votes to trounce Tinub, also a former Lagos State governor who scored 572,606 votes. However, Tinubu won the highest total votes in the election and was declared 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 — 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.