Following its inability to resolve several internal crises among its members, All Progressives Congress, APC, may not field candidates for 25 National Assembly, NASS, seats, Sunday Vanguard learned.
At the end of the deadline for submission of candidates for NASS seats on June 17, APC was said to have been unable to upload some of its candidates.
Prominent among the vacant seats are Yobe North and Akwa Ibom Northwest Senatorial Districts where the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan and immediate past Minister of Niger Delta, Sen Godswill Akpabion hail from.
A party source, who is angry at the development, lamented said APC leaders are nowhere to be found at a critical time such as this.
He said: “Our National Chairman is out of the country. Some said he went to China while others said he went to Germany. Our National Secretary, understandably, is very busy in his home state, Osun, ahead of the governorship election. Some members of the National Working Committee,NWC, are also either out of Abuja or even out of the country.
“The situation is such that even staff salaries at the party headquarters were only paid recently.
“As things stand, we don’t have candidates for 25 National Assembly seats because we did not upload candidates.”
Sunday Vanguard gathered that APC has been trying to use back channels to get the Independent National Electoral Commission ,INEC, to do its bidding by allowing it to upload candidates for the affected seats.
However, it was gathered that INEC insisted that it could not bend the rule for the ruling party.
The online submission of nomination forms EC9A, 9B, 9C, 9D and 9E for national elections – presidential and national assembly started on June 10 and ended on June 17.
Also, the dates for the submission of nomination forms for state elections – governorship and state assembly are between July 1 and July 15.
When contacted, National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Felix Morka declined comments.
However, INEC National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye said that “some political parties uploaded half the number (of candidates) depending on their relative strength and electoral preferences”.
Okoye was not specific about the APC.
He said: “We have 109 Senatorial Seats and 360 House of Representatives seats. We have presidential and vice presidential nominations. Ordinarily, each registered political party is supposed to upload the personal particulars of 471 candidates.
“Some political parties uploaded half the number depending on their relative strength and electoral preferences. The personal particulars of the validly nominated candidates have been published in the various constituencies.
“There is no law that mandates political parties to nominate 471 candidates. I can confirm that majority of the political parties did not meet up with the 471 threshold”.
