Police halt Kwankwasiyya-led PDP primary in Kano

Heavily armed policemen disrupted the Kwankwasiyya-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) parallel primary election in Kano yesterday.

Hundreds of Kwankwasiyya supporters who converged at the Lugard House secretariat of the movement for the election were denied access into the building by heavily armed policemen who barricaded the structure as early as 06:00am.

The National Secretary of the Kwankwasiyya Awareness Network, Comrade Auwal Muhammad, said they were at the Lugard House for the screening of their delegates and aspirants preparatory to the primary.

“All Kwankwasiyya delegates and aspirants were asked to assemble at the Lugard House today for a final screening before the primary elections,” he said.

“This house is where we normally meet and deliberate on political issues. So both PDP and other Kwankwasiyya coalitions were invited from all the 44 local governments only for us to come and meet policemen barricaded the house,” he said.

Our reporters observed that about seven police patrol Hilux vans were stationed around Marhaba, which leads to the venue, while five others were deployed to the Lugard House, which barricaded the other two routes to the house where the event was scheduled to hold.

Responding to the development, Alhaji Umar Haruna Doguwa, one of the leaders in the movement, said they intended to conduct primary elections at Marhaba, but that armed policemen cordoned off the area and prevented them from gaining access into the building.

The PDP state Chairman, Sen. Mas’ud El-Jibril Doguwa, said unless the party’s national headquarters tried to do something else, there were primaries in Kano State. He lamented that the laid down procedures for conducting legal primaries were not followed.

“Before a primary election is conducted in a state, a committee must be set up and the committee must meet with all aspirants and inform them the modalities it adopts. In the case of Kano, such a committee was not formed, not to talk of meeting with members of the committee.

“Again, the committee will also come with four letters, one for the party chairman of the particular state where the primary is going to hold, the three other letters are for the police, DSS and INEC, notifying them about the primary election. In our case there was nothing like that.

“After all, who are the members of the committee? When and where did they meet with the aspirants? We better sit down and iron out things rather than making things worse. There is nothing that cannot be solved through dialogue,” he said.

Confirming the incident, the Kano police spokesman, SP Magaji Musa Majia, said police were complying with a court order that stopped the PDP from conducting primaries and any other political activity in the state.