Police halt Kwankwasiyya-led PDP’s primary election in Kano

Heavily armed policemen have disrupted Kwankwasiyya-led faction of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from holding a parallel primary election scheduled to take place in Kano state on Monday.

Hundreds of Kwankwasiyya supporters who converged at Lugard House,
secretariat of the movement for election were denied access into the
building by heavily armed policemen who barricaded the structure as
early as 6am.

The national secretary of the Kwankwasiyya Awareness Network, Comrade
Auwal Muhammad, said they were at the Lugard House for the screening
of their delegates and aspirants preparatory to the primary election.

“All Kwankwasiyya delegates and aspirants were asked to assemble at
Lugard house today for a final screening before the primary election.
This house is where we normally meet and deliberate on political
issues. So both PDP and other Kwankwasiyya coalition were invited from
all the 44 local governments only for us to come and meet policemen
barricaded the house,” he said.

When our reporters visited Lugard House and Marbah, they observed that
about seven police patrol Hilux vans were stationed around Marhaba,
while five others deployed to Lugard House barricaded the two
entries to the house.

Responding to the development, Alhaji Umar Haruna Doguwa, one of the
leaders in the movement said they intended to conduct primary election
at Marhaba, but armed policemen cordoned-off the area and prevented
them from gaining access into the building.

The PDP state Chairman, Senator Mas’ud El-Jibril Doguwa said unless if
the party national headquarters tries to do something else, there was
no primary election in Kano state, lamenting that the laid down
procedures for conducting legal primary election were not been duly
followed.

He said, “Before a primary election is conducted in a state, a
committee must be set up and the committee must meet with all
aspirants and inform them the modalities it adopts. In the case of
Kano, such a committee was not formed not to talk of meeting with
members of the committee.

“Again, the committee will also come with four letters, one for the
party chairman of the particular state where the primary is going to
hold, the three other letters are for the police, DSS and the INEC
notifying them about the primary election. In our case there was
nothing like that.

“After all, who are the members of the committee? When and where do
they meet with the aspirants? We better sit down and iron out things
rather than making things worst. There is nothing that cannot be
solved through dialogue.”

Confirming the incident, the Police Public Relations Officer, SP
Magaji Musa Majia, said police were complying with a court order that
stopped the PDP from conducting primaries and any other political
activities in the state.