APC insist it will present Zamfara candidates for 2019 elections

Agency ReporterOctober 15, 2018

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The All Progressives Congress (APC) is confident that it will be able to present candidates for all available positions in Zamfara State in the 2019 general election despite the insistence by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that the case of the party in the state was closed.

INEC Chairman had told newsmen on Monday that commission stands by its decision to bar the APC from presenting candidates for the elections in Zamfara state, said it will go ahead to submit list of candidates from the state.

National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Isa-Onilu told The Nation that the party will meet all requirements for submission of candidates from Zamfara state.

He said “INEC cannot say that we don’t have candidates for election until the deadline has expired. We have options of consensus, direct and indirect primaries and we are going to apply like we have done in other states, our energies, time and concerns to pick our candidates.

“I can assure you that before the October 18 deadline, we are going to meet all INEC requirements and we are going to submit names of all the candidates for not Zamfara state but all the 36 states and the FCT”.

He dismissed the suggestion that APC might sue INEC, saying: “It is not yet something for the party to take legal action, nothing calls for that. We would not be reacting to what INEC said in the public”.

He explained that after the party got a letter from the INEC, it replied it but was yet to receive a reply from the commission.

“We are on the side of the law, we had a primary in Zamfara state. We are operating within the guidelines of INEC and the constitution of the Federal Republic Nigeria. We believe that INEC does not the correct information on what happened in Zamfara and this we have stated in our letter to the commission.

“They haven’t replied our letter so we take that the matter remained as it is. We also ask INEC that if they need more information from us, that we will be ready to offer it.

He said that APC regards INEC as an umpire and it is only other parties in coming elections that need to complain about how its candidates emerged.

“As an umpire you don’t give the result of a game that is ongoing. We still have up till October 18th to submit list of candidates for the election,” he said.