Since 1999, any presidential candidate that loses in Kwara State stood no chance of winning the general elections, the tradition that has now been sustained in the 2023 polls after the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress and Bola Tinubu recorded a resounding victory in the state to become Nigeria’s president-elect.
All of the winners of the presidential polls since the advent of the Fourth Republic have had their victories rooted in their performances in the North-Central state.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo of the Peoples Democratic Party set the tone in the 1999 elections when he won in the state with 470 510 votes as against 189,088 votes polled by his challenger Olu Falae of the Alliance for Democracy/ All Peoples Party. Obaseani went on to win the polls.
The former military head of state knew he had to repeat that feat in 2003 when he confronted then General Muhammadu Buhari of APP. He scored 390, 800 votes to beat Buhari who polled 170,325 votes in the state.
It was much easier for Umar Musa Yar’adua also of PDP in the 2007 election as he claimed victory in the state against top contenders including Buhari of All Nigeria Peoples Party, Atiku Abubakar of Action Congress of Nigeria and a host of others.
President Yar’adua’s vice Goodluck Jonathan flew PDP’s flag in 2011 and he resoundingly won in Kwara with 268, 243 votes against 83603 posted by Buhari of the Congress of Progressives Change.
After contesting three previous times Buhari, now of the All progressives Congress realised he needs to consider the Kwara factor and by this time he scored 302, 146 votes to defeat incumbent Jonathan who managed 132.602 votes.
138, 184 votes recorded by Atiku Abubakar of the PDP in the 2019 polls was not enough to dislodge Buhari who repeated the success of four years earlier by scoring 308, 984 votes.
However, Tinubu of APC maintained the tradition by recording an impressive 263,572 votes in Kwara to ward off the challenge from PDP’s Atiku who polled 136,909 votes.
