It was another day of complaints when the people of Kajuru Local Government Area in Zone 2 Senatorial District of Kaduna State on Wednesday inundated the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, with their many problems in the course of a campaign rally in the area.
Several party and community leaders spoke about the challenges confronting the people of the LGA in the course of the rally that witnessed a large turnout of enthusiastic supporters who stood beside the road and later gathered at the Kajuru Township Stadium. The campaign rally was a continuation of a process that would be repeated in each of the seven local government areas in the senatorial district.
While receiving a document in which the people of the LGA had listed their problems from a community leader, Alhaji Haruna Y. Saeed, El-Rufai said that he had seen for himself the total lack of development in the area and had taken note of them, adding that if elected he would see to it that their demands were granted.
The APC guber candidate explained that with his visits he had seen that many of the things the State Government announced it did for the people of Kajuru LGA were non-existent. “They said they constructed roads which they did not construct. Instead, Ramalan Yero has hidden the fund. But he will return it,” El-Rufai said to a loud round of applause from his listeners.
He added that in order for the change that the people desired to come, they needed to fulfill their own part. The part the people had to fulfill, he explained, was for them to vote on the day of election, pointing out that once the people did their part by bringing APC to office, the party would ensure that it fulfilled all the promises it had made.
At the occasion, the governorship candidate also received the leader of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) decampees, Mallam Nasir Suleiman, along with whom more than one thousand people had moved into the APC. Speaking in an interview, Sulaiman who was the chairman of PDP in Kajuru LGA, said PDP had no focus in terms of attending to projects that could bring development to the people. He said that everyone in the LGA had decided to vote for APC in order to cut away from the past that had not benefitted them in any way.
Addressing the people at the campaign rally, Comrade Shehu Sanni, the APC senatorial candidate for the Central zone in the state, said PDP was nonexistent in Kajuru LGA. “PDP is dead here. Everyone is tired of the party because it promised so much in the last 16 years but delivered nothing to the people. The party has destroyed Kaduna State,” Sanni said.
He urged the people to vote for the man who had demonstrated capacity for achievement, saying: “El-Rufai is not a new person to you. This is a man that has performed and all have seen it.”
Sanni added that since the PDP had done nothing for the people it was time for it to go, and this could only be done if the people trooped out on the day of election to vote APC.
APC senatorial candidate for Zone 1 in the northern part of Kaduna State, Sulaiman Hunkuyi, also spoke at the rally. The former governorship candidate under the defunct All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) declared that the change train the people wanted had come to Kajuru. He added that the change train had in it a man that never reneged on his promise. “PDP promised to construct clinics and fill them with drugs, but when your pregnant women go to clinic do they get drugs?” Hunkuyi asked.
Continuing, he said: “El-Rufai has promised what he will do when he is elected, and I know he doesn’t make promises he will not keep. El-Rufai has said your children will go to school without paying a fee, and I know that’s what he will do. He has said pregnant women will go to clinics and they will be treated without paying any fee. I know what he said is what he will do. So on the day of election, vote APC at every level.”
•Photo shows El-Rufai addressing a campaign rally.
NEWS EXPRESS is Nigeria’s leading online newspaper. Published by Africa’s international award-winning journalist, Mr. Isaac Umunna, NEWS EXPRESS is Nigeria’s first truly professional online daily newspaper. It is published from Lagos, Nigeria’s economic and media hub, and has a provision for occasional special print editions. Thanks to our vast network of sources and dedicated team of professional journalists and contributors spread across Nigeria and overseas, NEWS EXPRESS has become synonymous with newsbreaks and exclusive stories from around the world.