A former national vice chairman (North-west) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman, has said the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) lacks the power to determine the mode of primary election as it did for Edo State.
LEADERSHIP reports that APC had adopted a direct mode of primary election to nominate its candidate for the September 21, 2024 Edo governorship polls.
But Lukman insisted that the decision of the NWC was a clear usurpation of the powers of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and declared the action illegal.
In a statement he issued yesterday, the APC chieftain said the NWC decision to organise direct primary contradicted the provisions of Article 13.4(iv) of the APC Constitution.
He said Article only empowers the NWC to “propose electoral guidelines and regulations governing the conduct of elections to party offices at all levels and procedure for selecting party candidates for elective offices …to the National Executive Committee.”
He said, “The recent decision by the APC National Working Committee (NWC) regarding the 2024 Edo election, whereby the NWC announced that the party’s candidate will emerge through direct primary may be informed by the strong desire of party leaders to manipulate the process. Already, there are media reports alleging that APC Stakeholders in Edo State have decided to limit the number of aspirants for the primary.
“Combinations of illegality, clear disposition by APC leaders to manipulate the process of producing candidates could only mean that APC leaders are weakly committed to win the support of electorates. Once that is the case, it makes APC leaders more disposed to acts of rigging and manipulating electoral results with the attendant consequences of producing elected representatives on the platform of the party who are anything but representative or responsive to the interest of citizens.
“The founding vision of APC is for all members of the party to participate in producing the candidates of the party through a process which guarantees the existence of a verifiable membership register. As it is, APC has no verifiable membership register anywhere. If it exists, like the case of INEC voters register, it should be displayed publicly long before the conduct of the primary for verification,” Lukman stated.
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