Caleb Mutfwang, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in Plateau State has claimed that 80% of those who voted for Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi are PDP members.
He stated that while the people of the North Central state preferred Obi for President, they preferred the PDP for Governor.
“80% of the people who voted for Peter Obi are members of the PDP,” Mutfwang said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Tuesday.
“After that, they are reverting to the status quo because they only went after Mr Peter Obi because they believed in him. I can assure you that the people of Plateau State believe in us and will vote for us.
“The Peter Obi phenomenon was an expression of anger with the failure of governance, nationally. People truly want change and many people found expression in the candidature of Mr Peter Obi but beyond that, local dynamics come into play.”
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Despite the fact that the director general of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign, Simon Lalong, is a two-term governor of Plateau, Obi won Plateau with 466,272 votes in the recently concluded presidential election. Obi was followed by APC candidate Bola Tinubu, who received 307,195 votes, and Atiku Abubakar, who received 243,808 votes. However, the electoral body declared Tinubu the President-Elect after he received the most votes nationwide.
Speaking on Tuesday, the PDP governorship candidate in Plateau claimed that the Labour Party does not exist in the state and that people only voted for Obi because they are tired of the two dominant parties at the centre failing to provide leadership.
“With due respect, the Labour Party does not exist on the Plateau. It was a movement gathered around Mr Obi and some people tried to take advantage of that movement to key in but the National Assembly election proved which party is on ground and which party the people prefer,” he said.
Mutfwang said he respects all his opponents and he won’t underestimate any of them but he sees only the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as his main opponent in the March 11 governorship poll.
“The context for the governorship, If I will bring any other party to contention, it will be the APC, not the Labour Party,” he said.
Mutfwang stated that the people of the state have lost trust in the APC’s current leadership, and that his first responsibility will be to restore the people’s trust in the government by providing leadership that brings about change.
“Top on our agenda is security. I was once a local government chairman. So, I have been there. I will leverage on the experience of the past in terms of human management skills, inter-intra community harmony, reviving the security assets on ground in terms of vigilante and the rest of them so that they can perform optimally,” he said.
