Indirect Primaries Breed Corruption, Shehu Sani Tells APC

Onyebuchi Ezigbo Abuja

The Senator representing Kaduna central, Shehu Sani, has slammed the members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), opposing direct primary election, including governors, describing indirect primary as a major source of corruption in the polity.

Sani said indirect primary stands as direct antithesis to the commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption at all levels. .

Senator Sani who stormed the national secretariat of APC yesterday to submit a petition to the leadership of the party, said he is fully in support of the party’s adoption of direct primary, adding that indirect primary election is against the progressive ideals of the ruling party and President Buhari’s war against corruption.

Sani, who led other stakeholders from Kaduna State, including a governorship aspirant and a senatorial aspirant, said they are supporting the National Chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole and the party National Leader, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, in their quest to enthrone a new order in the party.

The petition, a copy of which was made available to journalists reads: “We the aspirants and stakeholders of the Kaduna State chapter of our great party the APC presents our best compliments to you.

“The delegate system, otherwise called indirect primaries will rely on the whims and caprices of the few that control the party after emerging from ward, local government and state congresses that have been widely rejected by party members as a sham.

“Hundreds of party members who bought forms with a view to vying for various wards, local governments and state party executive positions were deliberately excluded from the process and in some instances even intentionally blocked from submitting their forms nor were they even consulted ahead of the so-called processes of affirmation of officials of the party.”

While highlighting what usually happens during the indirect primary election, Sani said the names of all party executives were single handedly written by the governor.

“That alienated many of our party members and caused mass exodus from the party. These selected party executives under the tyrannical hold of the governor have been complying with the governor’s biddings, limiting access, communication and association to only those candidates in the favoured book of the governor,” he said.

The lawmaker said many members of the party executives have been appointed to serve as campaign coordinators of the governor’s preferred candidates at various levels while those deemed to be sympathetic to the cause of the people other than the governor have been shown the way out.

In the petition, Sani and his group said that the argument over insecurity , flies in the face of logic because if security challenges are sufficient ground not to adopt and conduct direct primaries, then it follows that the 2019 general election ought not to hold at all.

According to Sani: “Majority of the members of our party, armed with facts that are stark and incontrovertible, are now in court seeking judgements that would, from all indications, set aside these sham congresses.

“And since it is a legal dictum that you cannot build something on an illegality, it means that for Kaduna State at least, the indirect primaries system relying as it would on these bogus congresses is dead on anival.