Refusal to use winners of primaries: APC has no candidates in three senatorial districts

FOR submitting to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) names of persons who did not go through primaries, the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee (NEC) led by Senator Abdullahi Adamu may have made the party not to have candidates in some constituencies. 

The INEC released names of candidates on Friday without putting a candidate for the APC for Yobe North senatorial district. 

The names of the governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi (Ebonyi South senatorial district) and the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial district), were also missing from the list. 

The three did not participate in the senatorial primaries. 

They had contested the presidential primary of the party and failed to win the top ticket. 

Bashir Machina, who won the party’s primary for Yobe North senatorial district, was not on the list just as Senate President Ahmed Lawan’s name, which was submitted to INEC, was missing from the list, too. 

INEC’s National Commissioner for Information and Voters Education, Mr Festus Okoye, in a telephone interview with Saturday Tribune on Friday night, said the commission did not publish any candidate for the APC for that district because it did not receive the name of the person validly elected at the party’s primary. 

Machina won the May 23 senatorial primary conducted in Gashua, headquarters of Bale Local Government Area and supervised by Alhaji Danjuma Isa. 

He scored a total of 289 out of 300 votes to emerge the APC candidate in the zone. Okoye, however, told Saturday Tribune that the seat was left vacant “because the APC didn’t submit his (Machina’s) name as the validly nominated candidate.” 

Asked to explain why the incumbent Senate President and senator representing the zone, Ahmad Lawan, was also missing on the list of candidates, Okoye disclosed that the Senate President’s name couldn’t have been published because he didn’t participate in the primary for National Assembly seats. 

An analyst said: “INEC cannot pick Machina if the APC did not send his name as its candidate. A rejection of Lawan means that the APC is not in the race. The same is true for the two other senatorial districts involving Akpabio and Umahi. The APC is out in those places. The time for valid nomination is over.” 

Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday, Okoye said that the commission was not obligated to publish the names of candidates that did not emerge from valid party primaries. 

“If a political party submits to the Independent National Electoral Commission the name of a candidate that did not emerge from party primaries or did not emerge from valid party primaries, the commission is not obligated to publish the name of such a candidate,” he said. 

However, Mr Okoye noted that INEC had not published the final list of validly nominated candidates. 

“The final list of validly nominated candidates will be published by the Independent National Electoral Commission on the 20th day of September, 2022. And that is for presidential and National Assembly candidates. 

“What the commission has published, as of today, complies with Section 29(3) of the Electoral Act which says that the moment political parties comply with the provision of Section 29 (1) of the Electoral Act in terms of the submission of its validly nominated candidates, that the commission shall publish the personal particulars of such candidates in the constituencies where the candidates intend to contest election. 

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“In other words, for instance, for a senatorial candidate, if a senatorial district covers four local governments, we will publish the personal particulars of such a candidate in the four local governments. 

“That is exactly what we have done. And we published the personal particulars of candidates that emerged from valid party primaries. And that is what the law says we should do. 

“So, if the name of any candidate was not published or if the personal particulars of any candidate were not published today, the implication is that such a candidate did not emerge from valid party primaries.” 

Lawan was one of the presidential aspirants at the APC convention won by former Lagos State governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, who emerged as the party’s presidential candidate. 

Apparently reacting to pressures to submit his ticket to the Senate President, Machina had vowed not to surrender it. 

He noted that having failed to participate in the primary, Senator Lawan should not bother to show interest in the senatorial race. 

Machina further revealed that he formally wrote to the APC NWC to restate his resolve to contest the general elections. 

He said: “I am sure he did not plan to go back to the National Assembly. That is why he contested for the presidency and lost. This is democracy. The space is free.”