Niger: Candidates threaten APC over replacement

Winners of the APC senatorial primaries in Niger State have warned the national headquarters of the party of the consequence of substituting their names with those of the three sitting senators in the state.

The candidates said the APC should be prepared to forfeit Niger to an opposition party in the forthcoming general elections if it failed to uphold the mandate of the people who elected them during the primaries held on October 2.

Alhaji Muhammad Bima, who won the Niger South APC primary, issued the warning in a statement in Minna on behalf of two other candidates.

Senators. David Umaru (APC, Niger East), Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi (APC, Niger North) and Mustapha Sani (APC, Niger South) had failed in their bid to return to the upper chamber following their defeat by opponents during the primaries.

“We’ve heard of the plans by the officials in Abuja to replace our names with those of the incumbent senators,” Bima said.

“We want to tell the party that doing so will elicit three things. One, it would destroy APC in Niger State. Two, it would be tantamount to stealing the people’s mandate, and finally, APC would lose elections in the state because the people whose mandates were stolen would vote against the imposed candidates by giving sympathy votes to other parties,” he warned.

“Interestingly, those that the party is trying to give automatic tickets to by supplanting us are friends of the Senate President. Therefore, it’s improbable that they would turn around and fight him even after being given the tickets. But by then it would have been too late because the party would not have been able to change their names,” he said.

But Governor Abubakar Sani-Bello has distanced self from the issue of automatic ticket even as he urged APC supporters to remain calm and peaceful.

Governor Bello in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Malam Jibrin Baba Ndace, assured all stakeholders of peaceful resolution of the outcome of the primaries conducted in the state.