Kano PDP gov’ship: We only monitored primary that produced Mohammed Abacha – INEC

… Says 40% double registration recorded in CVR

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has cleared the air on the confusion that trailed the gubernatorial primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kano, saying it only monitored one of the parallel primary elections.

 Daily Trust reports that two persons (Mohammed Abacha and Sadiq Wali) have been claiming to be the legitimate candidates of the PDP in the state as a result of the internal crisis the party is facing.

But the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the state, Professor Riskuwa Shehu, told journalists on Thursday that the commission monitored only the primaries conducted by the Shehu Wada Sagagi-led state executive of the party which produced Mohammed Abacha as its governorship candidate.

“I’m sure you are aware of the many litigations in the (Kano) PDP and as at the time the primary election was to be conducted, the Sagagi-led faction was the recognized one”, he said.

He added that when the commission received a letter for the monitoring of the primaries containing the list of those to conduct the election from PDP headquarters, there was no mention of time and venue.

He said the Sagagi-led faction later contacted INEC and informed it of the venue and time; after which a team was dispatched to monitor the election but later on the same day “the team that came from the headquarters (of PDP) came and requested us to come and monitor the conduct of another election but we said No.”

“As far as INEC is concerned, we monitored the primary election that was conducted by the state leadership. Of course, there was nobody from the PDP headquarters (at the venue) and that is their internal issue. And that is the report we sent to the commission,” Prof Shehu added.

The INEC REC said by law, the electoral umpire is not expected to recognize any candidate that emerged from a primary it did not monitor.

In another development, the INEC REC has disclosed that the commission has created a special registration centre at the Sani Abacha Indoor Stadium where 30 machines and personnel will start attending to registrants from July 5 to help address the upsurge of registrants in the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) which, he said, has witnessed 40% double registration.

He said as of Monday, there were 369,651 online applicants in Kano while a total of 380,582 have completed their registration so far.

 “This scenario (double registration) is in all the states of the federation. In fact, there were states that recorded over 50% illegal registration. Double registration is an offence as clearly enshrined in the Electoral Act 2022,” he said.

 He also revealed that there are currently over 380,000 uncollected old Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) and 77,117 new PVCs (those who registered between June and December 2021) in Kano.