Kaduna APC Adopts Indirect Primaries For 2019 Elections

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The Kaduna State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has adopted indirect primaries to select its candidates for the 2019 general elections.

This was part of the resolutions reached during the party’s State Executive Council meeting held on Thursday.

The APC State Chairman, Emmanuel Jekada, and Deputy Governor Bala Bantex, addressed reporters after the meeting.

Mr Jekada explained that the option for indirect primaries was chosen due to the absence of a comprehensive register of party members and logistic challenges among other reasons.

“The Kaduna State Executive Committee (SEC) in line with the directives of the National Executive Committee (NEC), sat today, Thursday, 6th September, 2018 and adopted Indirect Primary as the mode of conduct of the party primary election in Kaduna State,” he said.

The chairman added, “The ‘Direct Primaries method’ is not applicable in the state due to the following reasons: 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 primary 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.”

According to Jekada, the experience of direct primaries from the recently concluded primaries for councillorship in the state was marred by significant disruption and controversy.

He stressed that such mode of conducting primary elections would not produce the desired results while its credibility may be questioned.

“Direct primary method would result in significant logistic challenges for the party,” the APC chieftain said.

“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.”

He stated further, “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.”