Magnus Abe, Shehu Sani, Others Lose Out As APC Submits Candidates List To INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) thursday made good its resolve not to extend the deadline for the submission of political parties’ lists of candidates for the presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled for the first quarter of next year as it ended the exercise last night.

The International Conference Center (ICC), Abuja, which the electoral body used as the collection centre was full of activities as political parties’ officials made frantic efforts to beat the deadline.

THISDAY gathered at press time that 84 parties had submitted their lists.

For the All Progressives Congress (APC) that was plagued by large scale disputes following its primaries, it was judgement day for the protesters as the party decided on whom to allot its tickets.

The party, said the National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Lanre Isa-Onilu, fielded candidates for all the states, including Zamfara, which INEC had said would not be allowed to present candidates because its primaries were not conducted within the stipulated time by the electoral body.

“We submitted applications for all the positions in all the states, including Zamfara,” he told THISDAY on phone last night, adding, that he could not give details of the list for the state.

Many heavyweights fell by the way side as their wishes were not met.

Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, was met half way by the party as he got his senatorial ticket while his preferred governorship candidate, Mr. Adekunle Akinlade, lost out to Chief Dapo Abiodun. The party’s appeals committee threw out Akinlade’s petition against Abiodun’s nomination.

In Plateau State, former deputy governor of the state, Mrs. Pauline Tallen, who was also a former minister, lost her bid to pick up a senatorial ticket.

In Kaduna State, although the appeals committee upheld the nomination of Senator Shehu Sani as saved by the National Working Committee (NWC), THISDAY sources said his name was eventually not on the list submitted to INEC by the party.

The appeal panel also dismissed the petition written against the emergence of Mr. Tonye Cole as the APC’s gubernatorial candidate in Rivers State.

This meant that Senator Magnus Abe would have to wait a bit to realise his ambition to govern the state.

THISDAY also gathered from a source that was privy to the decisions reached by appeals panel, which submitted its report to the NWC on Monday, that it upheld the candidacy of Mr. Uche Nwosu, the son-in-law of Imo State Governor, Chief Rochas Okorocha.

An intriguing verdict was the decision of the appeal panel to uphold the choice of Senator Shehu Sani as the candidate of the party for the Kaduna Central Senatorial District.

In its report, the appeal panel said it held that the primary conducted by the electoral panel for Kaduna was done in contempt of a court order, adding that the only aspirant cleared by the party to contest the election was Sani.

Yet, THISDAY reliably learnt, Sani’s name did not make the party’s list.

A reliable information on the report of the APC’s appeal panel showed that the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Uguru Usani, was a loser in the highly intricate struggle for the governorship ticket of the APC in Cross River State, losing his appeal against Senator John Eno.

The appeals committee, which considered petitions from the aspirants for the various offices, rejected many of the petitions while upholding the results of the primaries in the various states.

Among other big losers who also lost out in the governorship race according to the committee’s report include a brother to the wife of the president, Aisha Buhari, Alhaji Mahmoud Halilu, popularly known as Modi, and President of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) Bala Bobboi Kaigama.

There was tension within the national headquarters of the party as aspirants for the Senate and House of Representatives besieged it to know the outcome of the screening and probably the list of candidates sent to INEC by the party.

The leadership of the APC had made the list of candidates a top secret and would not even let those who lost at appeals level know their fate until the last day of submission.