Zamfara: There’s pressure from the people for us to dump APC — Yari

Zamfara State’s Governor Abdulaziz Yari has cleared the air over his alleged plot to dump the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Yari, the APC Governors Forum chairman denied the allegation but said that there was indeed pressure from the people for them to exit the ruling party.

The governor maintained that the state APC held primaries and wondered why the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would claim there was no election in the state.

The crisis in Zamfara APC got awry when INEC barred the party from fielding any candidates for the 2019 poll from the state over failure to conduct primary elections.

While the National Chairman of the party, Adams Oshiomhole and a faction of the party in the state have insisted there was primaries, a serving senator and one of the governorship aspirants in the state, Kabiru Marafa and his group argue otherwise.

Yari, who was in Abuja on Friday and had a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari spoke to State House correspondents about the development in Zamfara after his discussion with the President.

He said, “I don’t know whether that (report I want to quit APC) is a joke or otherwise.

“But for me, if you check my history since 1998, APP, and 2002 when Buhari joined ANPP, and 2015 APC, no time that I shifted from one party to another. That is not in my culture. So, the issue of leaving the party is not true.

“But some other people are sending rumour through the social media. I have seen my picture with the PDP and other parties. Yes, I cannot deny pressure from the people that we should leave APC but what I told them is that what we are looking for is just justice.

“We conducted electon and we want to see what the result is going to look. But I think for any body to come under the national secretariat and say he is going to nominate a candidate, I think, it is a very huge joke.”

On APC primaries in the state, the governor said, “There were hitches somewhere but we decided to suspend the area where there were problems until the following day. So, the following day, we continued and we concluded the election by the people nominated by that committee to conduct election but the committee ran away and refused to collate the results.

“So, what we did was that we filed the results and kept it under the watch of those people and waited to see what was going to happen. The second committee waited 32 hours to the closing, we thought the committee will hasten and come up with modalities for the election.

“But committee wasted about 18 hours discussing about how the modalities were going to be. So, when we realised that, we were actually advised by the supervisory agency that is INEC and other agencies there that the best thing to do as the people had voted and since it was 7am was to start counting.

“When they finished, they released the materials and we adopted the numbers. Already, we had produced our own set of forms for the national Assembly which we have done and then, when we concluded, I didn’t see members of the committee until one and half hours to the time.

“Then, when they came I asked them what they came for, they said they came for reconciliation and I said which reconciliation? People can not reconcile over a month and you are trying to reconcile in an hour. Then, I realised that there was a game that was being played so that we can run out of time.”

Yari said that there is suspicion that the national body of APC had other illegal ways to produce candidates contrary to section 87 of the Electoral Act that the party must follow a process before producing any candidate.

“Therfore, the most important is that we conducted election on the 3rd and 4th of October and all agencies, INEC, Civil Defence, Police, and DSS were there and they signed for us and the report was written by the REC that elections were conducted.

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“Unfortunately, for the INEC to say that there was no election, we don’t know where they got their information but we believe they have a report directly from their representative there that election was held in Zamfara state, so, it depends on what they want to do.

“But, in any way, we were advised when the chairman of the committee came out and said there was no election in Zamfara state, we realised it was going to be a litigation issue. We quickly rushed to court, we filed a case and the case is coming up next week.

“So, I think that is the only saving grace for the party and INEC for court of competent jurisdiction to give judgement on Zamfara matter that there was election.”

 

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