Complaints of imposition of candidates and other infractions on Monday marked the conduct of the chairmanship and councillorship primaries of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ahead of local council elections scheduled for the 21 LGAs of the state in November this year.
Violence was alleged in some areas, with one Mahmud Othman, an aspirant from Maiha LGA in the northern zone of the state, saying that in most of the local government areas in the zone, “the primaries to elect local government chairmanship and councillorship candidates were greeted with gun shots,” sending people to all directions.
He reiterated that similar problems were recorded in the other four local government areas that make up the senatorial zone: Madagali, Michika, Mubi North and Mubi South, “because of imposition of government favoured candidates and the disqualification of the people’s preferred ones.”
A party member in Ganye Local Government Area, Michael Gwangwaso, alleged a free for all in the area over imposition of aspirants.
He said, “They wanted to cheat us. The party primary was not conducted in a transparent manner. They wanted to impose their unpopular candidates on us.”
In Numan LGA, members of Concerned Citizens of Numan Town, a PDP sub-group, protested against ‘wrongful disqualification’ of some aspirants by the party’s screening committee.
The group members who took their protest to the state capital, Yola, addressed a press conference, accusing the party’s screening committee of showing favouratism. Their spokesman, Mr Vidiyabo Pagiel, who read the text of the briefing, said, “Why are some councillorship candidates cleared by the committee despite the allegations raised against them that they are still civil servants on government payroll.”
Attempts to get comments from PDP officials largely failed as they would not respond to phone calls nor were they available in their offices.
The Secretary of the party, Abdullahi Prambe, however later said on phone that he was in Abuja. He offered that stakeholders of the party who had issues over the primaries could table such issues with the appeal committee constituted for that purpose.
The situation in the PDP is a marked contrast from what applied in the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), which was on Monday afternoon celebrating peaceful primaries as it released names of 18 candidates for the November chairmanship election, leaving out three LGAs from where results had not arrived Yola when the party held a press briefing.