•APC national chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda
The North-Central Forum of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has given the party’s National Chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, a two-week ultimatum to step down over allegations of commercialising the recently concluded primary elections.
The Forum accused the Yilwatda-led National Working Committee (NWC) of being responsible for the disputes and controversies that marred the ruling party’s State Assembly, National Assembly, governorship and presidential primaries, reports The Guardian.
The group alleged that results were upturned to favour those who danced to the tune of party officials while in several cases, aspirants who were set to win primary elections were screened out.
The Forum made the allegations in a statement released today by its National Chairman, Alhaji Saleh Zazzaga.
Highlighting its observations today, following the conclusion of the primaries, the North-Central APC Forum said the national chairman and members of his executive committee should be held to account for flouting party rules.
The Forum warned that it would drag the National Chairman to court if he fails to resign by June 12, when the country will mark the 2026 Democracy Day.
“We are issuing a two-week ultimatum to the national chairman to resign because of incompetence, violation of the party’s constitution, monetization of the just concluded party primaries and changing the results when it favoured those perceived as not in his camp.
“We have it on good authority that the National Chairman and his team used their position to change the results and influence the outcome of primary elections across the country,” the statement said.
Justifying its claim that the outcome of the primaries was manipulated in several cases, the APC group pointed to alleged discrepancies in party official records and the number of votes recorded for President Bola Tinubu in the presidential primary election.
Chairman of the APC Presidential Primary Election Committee, former Senate President Pius Anyim announced that Tinubu won with a total number of 10,999,162 votes to defeat his challenger, Stanley Osifo, who got 16,503 votes.
The announced result has stirred controversy following suggestions that figures used for the primaries were inflated.
The Forum, in the statement, argued that the fact that figures released by the committee did not tally with official party data shows that officials manipulated the outcome of the primaries.
“We are concerned that the NWC under the national chairman did not tally the official data of the party with the presidential primary election. The party has eight million registered voters but when they released the result of Mr President in the presidential primary they wrote more than 10 million votes.
“The guidelines stated that only those that are registered are going to vote. So this means that, all over the country, what they did was selection of candidates, not election,” the statement said.
The Forum further lamented that the party has been weakened as a result of the controversy trailing the primaries, with several key members resigning to join other political parties over perceived injustice.
A former Deputy President of the Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege, is the latest party chieftain to resign while protesting his loss in the Delta Central senate primary. He has since moved to the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and has, reportedly, been given a waiver to contest the senatorial election.
The North-Central APC Forum also pointed out that the national chairman’s former Chief of Staff, Mustapha Bala Dawaki, resigned from the party in protest after losing the return ticket of the Dawakin Kudu/Warawa Constituency of Kano State. Dawaki also moved to the NDC.
