APC holds ward congress today in Niger

From Yakubu Mustapha, Minna

Niger State Chairman of Ward Congress Committee of the All Progressives Congress{APC} Barr. Usman Dalhatu has said that after the release of the names of the qualified candidates yesterday, that the election proper would be held today.

Dalhatu, who stated this at the party secretariat in Minna yesterday explained that the sales and submission of nomination forms which commenced last Saturday had closed on Monday afternoon.

He further revealed that the Ward Congress of the party earlier scheduled for last Saturday had to be postponed in order for the five- man committee to reconcile the intra- party crisis within the Niger state chapter of APC, following the existence of two factional groups with vested interests.

“And we continued with all the necessary arrangements to enable us go ahead with our scheduled programme . Thank God we received the co-operation of all the stakeholders in the state and that is very encouraging to us and we realized that there are two groups within the state’s APC and this groups have vested interests.

“But what we considered paramount is the interest of the party that should be supreme and that people should play according to the rules of the game. As such, we organized a meeting after we all agreed that all the participants should be allowed unhindered access to buy forms’ he stated.

He further said the committee and all the stakeholders agreed that they were going to stop the sale y of nomination forms as at Saturday , adding that all those who came for the forms were able to purchase their forms without any problem, saying , “we continue to receive the nomination forms up till the midnight on Sunday and people were still coming as at Monday afternoon for the submission of the forms”.

“And we realized that due to the terrain in the state, there are some people who are far away and the road is not good . So many people are living in the riverside areas of the state, because of that we could not receive any forms from about seven Local Governments of the state like Borgu, Agwara, Mokwa, Mashegu and the rest.

“So our people were on ground up till 1pm on Sunday and as such we immediately summoned the representatives of these group to look for a way to resolve the issue because we cannot prevent people from participating in election. And for this reason, we decided to extend the time to Wednesday” he maintained.