A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Cletus Obun, has warned that the ruling party risks suffering another Zamfara-style electoral setback if it ignores the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) warning on candidate substitution and fails to strictly follow its primary election procedures.
Speaking in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Thursday, Obun said the APC must ensure that only aspirants who genuinely participated in the party primaries emerge as candidates, stressing that any attempt to bypass the process could expose the party to post-election legal challenges from opposition parties.
“APC must go back and do its due diligence and present candidates that participated in the elections.”
He argued that INEC’s warning was aimed at sanitising the primary election process rather than targeting any political party, adding that the APC would only strengthen the opposition’s case if it failed to correct irregularities before the elections. “What INEC is about to do is to sanitise the processes of primaries.”
Obun noted that aspirants previously disqualified during the screening process could not suddenly become candidates without a clear explanation. “If you now claim that after you are screening, the person you screened out suddenly qualified, what made that person qualify? What disqualified people are now qualified? This is what INEC is referring to.”
According to him, documents generated during the party’s screening and primary process would remain public records and could become evidence in election petitions filed by rival political parties. “Those disqualifications will again be used even by our own opponents after the election, because those documents are public documents.”
Obun recalled how similar procedural failures had cost the party electoral victories in the past, citing the Zamfara governorship case and the Plateau elections as examples of avoidable mistakes. “In Zamfara, we were the first victims. We won all the elections and we were thrown out from the courts. So you cannot make one error twice unless there is something behind it.”
He maintained that although the APC had constitutional mechanisms for resolving disputes arising from its primaries. “APC’s internal mechanism for this is enshrined in their constitution those procedures may still not have met the threshold.”
Obun further warned that opposition parties would not hesitate to rely on the APC’s own documents and decisions to challenge its candidates after the elections if the party failed to conduct proper due diligence. “It is now becoming external because other parties are going to use your own documents and your own decisions that you took at a different level against you.”
He cautioned that the APC should not become complacent because of its electoral strength.“We are in for a shocker in the next election, because this is not going to be an ordinary election. And APC should not take anything for granted.”
Obun added that while no political party could expect to get every decision right during its primaries. “We may not get 100 percent right, but we should reduce the margin of error so that we don’t get into unforced errors and give our opponents an opportunity.”