Over two months after the congress of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Katsina State to elect officials was conducted, Senator Kanti Bello has insisted that the exercise remains inconclusive.
Kanti Bello
Bello, a two-term Senator from 2003 to 2011 and an aspirant for the party’s governorship ticket in the 2015 ballot, said anybody parading himself as a member of the state executive “is fake and should be ignored.”
He maintained that election was only conducted for the chairmanship, which was won by Mustaph Inuwa from the group led by former House of Representatives Speaker, Aminu Masari.
“We have three groups that fielded candidates for all the positions. That is the Masari group, my group and the group led by Abdulaziz, the younger brother of late President Umaru Yar’Adua,” he recounted.
“As a way of uniting the three groups, since we are all working for the growth of the party in the state, an understanding was reached by the aspirants that election should be conducted for only the chairmanship seat, while the remaining positions will be shared pro-rata among the three groups based on their electoral strength from the result of the chairmanship contest.
“At the end of the chairmanship election, after serious manipulation, the candidate of the (Masari) group won with about 1,000 votes. My group scored about 800 and Yar’Adua group had 192.
“What should happen immediately after the emergence of the chairman, in line with the agreement and in the spirit of oneness, is for the rest positions to be shared in this manner – 50 per cent for them plus the chairmanship which they won; 40 per cent for my group and 10 per cent for the Yar’Adua group.”
Bello said it is not acceptable for the Masari group to claim to have “won everything” when no election was conducted except for the chairmanship “and we shall fight to the last to see that justice is done.”
He urged all the groups to stick to the agreement or conduct a proper ballot for the other positions.
“Now that Ekiti and Osun elections are over, we do hope that the national body of our party will come in as fast as possible to intervene before it is too late.”
Bello said he has spoken with APC National Chairman, John Oyegun, who assured him that a committee will be set up to resolve the matter.
In his view, justice must prevail in the APC because it wants to take over power from the PDP, “a failed party which has meted out great injustice to Nigerians with high level of corruption in its government.
“I am a loyal member of APC, I remain in APC, but, we must do the right thing.”