By Correspondent in Minna
The nationwide local government congresses of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) which remained largely on consensus basis did not turn out as expected across Niger state on Saturday as 5 out of the 25 Local Government Areas rejected consensus candidates as adopted by the party.
The Chairman of the APC Committee for Niger state, Senator Domingo Obende, who disclosed this at Government House, Minna after the exercise, also confirmed that the affected 5 LGAs could not agree on consensus adding that they would go ahead with election on Sunday by 10 a.m.
Addressing journalists shortly after monitoring the exercise, Senator Obende said contrary to insinuations, there was no imposition of candidate anywhere because stakeholders across the 25 LGAs agreed to zone positions in their various areas.
Our correspondent reports that though there were ignorable skirmishes here and there, Obende said the exercise was relatively peaceful, especially for the position chairmanship which had been in contention in few local government areas.
Obande gave the Local Government Areas where the people resisted concensus candidature as: Wushishi, Rijau, Shiroro, Bida and Lapai, promising however that the Saturday exercise was transparent, free and fair to the acceptability of all.
Senator Obande said that the 3-man panel set up by the party had been given a template on how to go about the exercise.
While calling on the party faithful in the five affected local government areas to remain calm and to conduct themselves peacefully by shunning violence or chaos, Obande assured them of fair and transparent election.
