Senatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for Yobe North Senatorial district, Bashir Machina, has refuted claims by national chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu, that Senate President Ahmad Lawan contested the primary election for the senatorial seat.
Machina had last Friday threatened legal action over alleged substitution of his name with that of Lawan in the list sent to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
INEC recognised Lawan as the candidate of the APC for the Yobe North Senatorial district after his name was uploaded on the commission’s server by the governing party alongside other senatorial candidates across the 36 states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory.
Speaking with State House correspondents on Monday at the presidential villa after presenting the Ekiti State governor-elect to President Muhammadu Buhari, Adamu said Lawan contested the senatorial primary in Yobe.
In an attempt to ignore the question, Adamu parried and begged the question before answering implicitly that Lawan contested the senatorial primary.
But speaking through Husaini Mohammed Isah, spokesman of his campaign organisation, Machina expressed shock over Adamu’s claim, just as he reminded the national chairman that INEC monitored the primary election.
He advised Adamu and other party leaders “not to be ready to compromise for personal gain.
“Instead, they should take a stand based on principle and accommodate the interest of every member of the party, especially senior members with the status of Bashir Sheriff Machina, Isah added.
In a statement made available to LEADERSHIP yesterday, Isah said, “We read with shock, national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Abdullahi Adamu on newspapers where he claimed that Senate President, Ahmad Lawan participated in the senatorial primary election of his district but failed to disclose how he participated in the primary poll.
“The Bashir Machina Campaign Organisation finds Abdullahi Adamu’s statement grossly unacceptable and we hereby reject it in its entirety.
“As an organisation, we carefully x-rayed the content of the message which the national chairman of APC, Abdullahi Adamu, was struggling to pass to the State House correspondents and we came up with the suspicion that some attempts were made behind the scene to justify the unjustifiable.
“We wonder how one can explain to Nigerians the magic deployed by the party to insert Ahmad Lawan’s name among senatorial aspirants who participated in the primary poll that was conducted on the 28th of May 2022 considering the fact that the senate president was at that same day in the field doing his presidential campaign.
“Machina Campaign Organisation wants to believe that the national chairman of APC was quoted out of context because as far as we are concerned, INEC monitored only one APC senatorial primaries in Yobe North which produced Bashir Sheriff Machina as the duly elected candidate of the Party.
“While our candidate, Bashir Machina, is set for the legal battle to reclaim his mandate, we acknowledge the Independent National Electoral Commission for its firm stand for justice and unflinching commitment to ensuring that only the authentic winners of the primary elections make the final list of candidates.”
