A frontline politician in Kwara State, Alhaji Abdullahi Yahman, who recently decamped from the All Progressives Congress to the Peoples Democratic Party has emerged as the governorship candidate of PDP in the state.
His emergence came after he won the primary election conducted by the party for its governorship aspirants in the state where he polled 518 from the total votes of 574 in the election.
He defeated Honourable Aliyu Ahman-Pategi, a three-term member of the House of Representatives who polled 31 votes, and Professor GanaYisa, an ex-envoy of Nigeria to Japan and former Deputy Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly who scored 14 votes in the election.
According to the election results announced by a former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in Osun State, Hon Niyi Owolade, who served as chairman of the PDP electoral committee and the returning officer in the election, Abdullahi polled 518 which was the highest number of votes in the election.
Owolade said 574 of the total number of 591 delegates were accredited while 11 votes were voided.
The PDP had zoned the governorship ticket to the North Senatorial district of the state from where all the contestants hail.
Abdullahi who lost the governorship ticket of the APC to Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq in 2019 had just left the party about six weeks ago to pick a form for contest in the governorship primaries of the PDP for the next year’s election.
He had before this time alongside some other aspirants sought the governorship ticket of the APC in 2003 which he and the others lost to Bukola Saraki.
The politician was the Kwara North Senatorial candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria in 2011 when the incumbent minister of state for transport, Senator Gbemisola Saraki was the party’s governorship candidate.
The election which was conducted at the Arca Santa Arena along Ilorin/Ajasa-Ipo road in Ilorin went without rancour as delegates conducted themselves peacefully and orderly.
Abdullahi, in his acceptance speech, thanked his co-contestants for accepting the outcome of the election and called for the cooperation of all members of the party in the election proper coming up next year.
He said Kwara State under the present administration of the APC had derailed from the track of progress and development and urged the electorate to vote for all the PDP candidates in the 2023 general election to put the state back on the track.