The Kaduna Central Senatorial District of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has kicked out embattled Senator Shehu Sani and gave the ticket to Uba Sani who is Special Adviser to Governor Nasiru el-Rufai on Political and Intergovernmental Affairs.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Uba Sani polled 2,088 votes to defeat incumbent Senator Shehu, who got 15 votes, and three other aspirants.
The APC Coordinator for the Kaduna Central Senatorial Zone, Professor Eddie Floyd-Igbo, declared the results of the primaries held at Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Sports Multipurpose Hall, Kaduna, yesterday, Saturday.
Professor Floyd-Igbo announced that one of the aspirants, Usman Ibrahim got 129 votes in the primaries.
He also said that Senator Sani Saleh, who served Kaduna Central people in the Senate from 2011 to 2015 got 55 votes.
Another contestant, Shamsudeen Shehu, got six votes, while 45 votes were declared invalid.
He said 2,383 voters were accredited from seven local government areas of the zone for the primary election.
This was coming after the APC National Working Committee (NWC) had cleared Senator Shehu Sani as the sole candidate in the race, which was resisted by the other aspirants and party loyalists in the state. Shehu Sani who is Chairman, Senate Committee on Domestic and Foreign Debts, had however, earlier announced his withdrawal from the primaries.
In a statement by his Media Aide, Abdulsamad Amadi, Senator Shehu said that the exercise was illegal, saying: “the Office of Senator Shehu Sani has not, and will not send anybody as their representative or agent to that illegality that some desperate people are organising.
“This is because the national leadership of the APC has not scheduled any senatorial primaries in Kaduna Central today.
“Consequently, anybody that goes there does so at his or her own freewill and does not in any way represent the interest of Senator Shehu Sani.
“The Senator and his team are law abiding citizens and loyal party members who will always obey the directives of the National leadership of our great party,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has reminded all participants that it would only accept candidates forwarded to it by the national secretariats of the political parties.
The electoral body also gave the parties up till Oct. 7 to submit their candidates for the 2019 general elections.
Source: NAN.
