Kaduna State Chapter of the All Progressive Congress (APC), have adopted indirect mode of primary election to field candidates for the party in Nigeria’s 2019 general elections.
This decision was taken at the meeting of the State Executive Committee (SEC) of the party, held on Thursday in Kaduna, northwest of the country.
Below is the resolution of the meeting;
RESOLUTION
The Kaduna State Executive Committee (SEC) in line with the directives of the National Executive Committee (NEC), sat today, Thursday, 6 September, 2018 and adopted “Indirect Primary” as the mode of conduct of the party primary elections in Kaduna state.
- The ‘Direct Primary method’ is not applicable in the State due to the following reasons:
a. Absence of a comprehensive register of party members; the APC Kaduna party leadership has made spirited attempts to acquire a comprehensive database of party members from the party’s National Headquarters but to no avail. Without a comprehensive membership register, any direct primaries may be disrupted by non-members including individuals from other parties who may come up with fake membership cards to cause confusion in the process.
b. Experience of Direct Primaries from the recently concluded primary elections for councillorship in state where the party adopted direct primaries to select its candidates was marred by significant disruption and controversy and over stretched the security agencies. Using this mode for the upcoming primary elections would definitely not produce the desired results and its credibility may be called to question.
c. The Direct primary method would result in significant logistic challenges for the party; with party membership running into hundreds of thousands in the state, printing of ballots, deployment of election materials, accreditation, voting, collation and declaration of results would be very expensive with financial cost surpassing a billion naira in Kaduna alone. These are costs that the party may not be able to shoulder in view of the fact that it was not envisaged, and no budget provision has been made for it.
- In order to deepen and broaden the democratic practice, the party looks forward to the adoption of direct primaries in future elections at which time the limitations listed above would have been resolved.
Therefore, in recognition of 2a-c above, the State Executive Committee adopted the ‘Indirect’ mode of primaries for nomination of candidates in the 2019 elections in the state.
This decision will accordingly be communicated to the National Executive Committee of the party as required
Air Cdre Emmanuel K. Jekada
State Chairman
6th September 2018
https://www.africaprimenews.com/2018/09/06/news/nigeria-2019-senator-shehu-sani-other-aspirants-kick-against-direct-primaries-in-kaduna/
