The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that the All Progressives Congress has no candidates in three senatorial districts across the country because the party submitted names of persons who did not go through primaries.
To this end, the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee (NEC) led by Senator Abdullahi Adamu may have made the party not to have candidates in some constituencies.
The INEC released names of candidates on Friday without putting a candidate for the APC for Yobe North senatorial district.
The names of the governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi (Ebonyi South senatorial district) and the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom North-West senatorial district), were also missing from the list.
The three did not participate in the senatorial primaries.
They had contested the presidential primary of the party and failed to win the top ticket.
Bashir Machina, who won the party’s primary for Yobe North senatorial district, was not on the list just as Senate President Ahmed Lawan’s name, which was submitted to INEC, was missing from the list, too.
INEC’s National Commissioner for Information and Voters Education, Mr Festus Okoye, in a telephone interview with Saturday Tribune on Friday night, said the commission did not publish any candidate for the APC for that district because it did not receive the name of the person validly elected at the party’s primary.
Machina won the May 23 senatorial primary conducted in Gashua, headquarters of Bale Local Government Area and supervised by Alhaji Danjuma Isa.
He scored a total of 289 out of 300 votes to emerge the APC candidate in the zone. Okoye, however said that the seat was left vacant “because the APC didn’t submit his (Machina’s) name as the validly nominated candidate.”