Constituents of Disina State Constituency in Bauchi State have expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of the All Progressives Congress (APC) state consituency primary election which produced their representative for the state legislature.
Consequently, they are appealing to the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the state, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, to wade into the matter with a view to rectifying the anomalies in its conduct.
The constituents said at a reception they organized to review the election that they were perturbed by the way and manner some party stakeholders “spoiled the show” by mugging their aspirant’s mandate, Yakubu Ali, into the State House of Assembly.
The campaign director of the aspirant, Dr. Armaya’u Alhaji Sani, noted with dissatisfaction that delegates were, prior to the primary election, lured into one house for three consecutive days held there incommunicado only for the electoral committee to announce the results on the election day.
He said: “It was a so-called primary election into the Disina constituency of the State House of Assemble, but it was a hoax,” adding, “Delegates were hoodwinked, coaxed and coerced into a house three days prior to the election, and even threatened with expulsion from the party should they go contrary to a directive”.
Dr. Armaya’u, therefore, drew the attention of the Bauchi state APC gubernatorial candidate on the matter, stressing “My fear is for the party members and electorates to be forced into party activities, a situation that robbed APC of the governorship seat in 2019”.
Dr. Armaya’u narrated: “On the day of the primary election, I seek the support of officers of the State Security Service to ensure that the conned delegates were out from the house for proper election, even if our aspirant would get negative not zero from the election, but they did their worse and came out with result to our disadvantage”.
He, however, assured that that they would remain within the ambit of the APC come rain or sunshine, and see how party leaders and critical stakeholders could settle this tricky political matter to the advantage of the party in Disina, state and the country at large.
Also speaking, the Disina state constituency aspirant to the State House of Assembly, Yakubu Ali, affirmed: “Delegates were hoodwinked or caged into one house for three days. Even if it is prayer time, these delegates used to be escorted to the mosque, what a funny thing.”
He continues: “Those caged delegates were brought from the said house through or into a vehicle to the election venue, forced to give the balloting cards to the agents of the opposing aspirant who thumbprinted and voted for the candidate of the Disina party chairman,” lamenting, “It was really a day-light robbery of my mandate.”
