Bauchi By-election: Shuaibu Urges APC to Nullify Primary Election

Segun Awofadeji in Bauchi

An aspirant for the Bauchi South senatorial by-election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Ahmed Shuaibu, who lost to Lawal Yahya Gumau at the party’s primary election last week, has appealed to the national leadership of the party to nullify the exercise over alleged irregularities.

In his petition letter, copies which he issued to journalists in Bauchi shortly after addressing a press conference last Monday, Shuaibu alleged that delegates who voted at the primary election were influenced by the state Governor, Mohammed Abubakar, to choose either Gumau or Dr. Danjuma Dabo, all of whom hail from Toro Local Government Area.

According to him, the governor also allegedly asked the delegates to give him only seven votes during the election to ensure he was not returned as the party’s candidate for the August 11 bye election.

NCC to License Telecom Operators for Efficient Lottery Management

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is to license telecom operators for efficient management of gaming and lotteries in Nigeria.

The Executive Vice Chairman of the commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta disclosed this to journalists yesterday after the commission signed a Memoradum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nigerian Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) on the efficient management of gaming and lotteries in the country.

According to him, “We have an existing Memorandum of Understanding since 2011; the two commissions deem it appropriate to review the MoU and there is a provision that stipulates doing this every four years, and finally today we are giving life to the MoU.

“And very soon we are going to license our telecom operators to host lotteries on telecom network, and because the networks are regulated by the NCC we need to be involved because the service you are about to introduce will add additional burden to the network and the NCC is always concerned that any burden on the telecommunication’s infrastructure may conspire to degrade quality of service,” he explained.

Danbatta said the signing of the important document rhymes with two important items of NCC’s eight point agenda on strategic plans.

He added that the whole idea is to cooperate in order to provide the environment, with facilities for the lottery commission to host lotteries in the country, because lotteries all over the world are electronically driven.

The NCC further explained, “There is no better infrastructure available to the conduct of lotteries in this country than the telecommunications infrastructure. Now as you are aware bringing any additional service on the infrastructure adds additional burden to the networks.

“Therefore the commission is concerned that any additional service to the networks could or may conspire to degrade quality of service. That is why the NCC has to be involved from the very beginning to ensure that our operators who will be participating in hosting the lottery services have the capacity to do so.”

Reacting the Director General of the NLRC, Mr. Lanre Gbagiabianila, stated that the collaboration was necessary as gaming and lottery services are now technology based.

According to him, “Today is long waited for we needed to have this MoU done the way the industry is right now the channels are Service providers use the telecom Communications platforms to do lottery and gaming hence we needed to have this collaboration to improve the processing and integrity.

“Everything is now technology driven there is no how the commission can do it alone; the commission has a platform where all the operators are connected to our system whereby we are able to actually see the transactions and what is being discharged to the actual winners,” he said.