Controversies have continued to trail the conduct of last Saturday’s ward congresses election of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bauchi State as faction loyal to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara on Sunday conducted a parallel election across the state to elect leaders of the party.
DAILY POST gathered that the situation may further deepen the political war between supporters of the state Governor, Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar on one hand and majority members of the National Assembly from the state on the other hand, thereby putting the APC in the state in a precarious situation ahead of the 2019 general elections.
Senator Nazif Suleiman Gamawa representing Bauchi North senatorial district had accused the ward congress committee led by Dr Tony Macfoy of been partial and doing the bidding of Governor Abubakar, thereby violating the guidelines of the APC in the process.”
Suleiman Gamawa who addressed journalists late Sunday night at his residence in Bauchi, said that Macfoy’s declaration that the ward congresses election his committee conducted on Saturday was free and fair was a big lie and a slap to APC and democracy.
“What he did was unfortunate and very sad. APC is a party that we are proud of. It is a party that is supposed to be a party of justice and we expected nothing better than that.
“There was no election on Saturday, 5th of May. You can find out from INEC that is supposed to monitor that election and they will tell you there was no election. The election took place today the 6th of May. All they did was that they went into their rooms and wrote results.
“What we did today (Sunday, May 6th) was that we came out and we insisted that there must be election when we got the forms after struggling with them because initially they didn’t want to give us the forms after Bank payment” Gamawa stress
“They gave us the forms on Saturday at about 2:00 pm but the guideline saying within 24 hours, we should return those forms. So we took the forms, gave them to the people and those people endorsed the forms and brought the forms and on Saturday we went out and were ready but the congress committee members refused to come out to the venue of the election. They just went and wrote results because the INEC, SSS and Police were not there,” he alleged.
Senator Nazif Gamawa also said that his group was calling for justice and fairness, alleging that it is impossible for the Governor’s group to receive two forms–one for his coordinator and the other for his commissioners”.
He said, “Our fear is that the elections were not done in the open, maybe at the end of the day, may be it is the Governor’s coordinators that want to turn themselves to be executives of the party.”
The politician insisted that his group bought forms for the people that had held the party for four years and that after filling those forms they expected that election would be held as scheduled but the committee refused to come to the localities to witness the election.
He further said that his group was awaiting the arrival of the Appeal Committee in the state, assuring that they would follow all necessary due processes and legal means.
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