A former Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (House of Reps), Hon. Suleiman Abdulrahman Kawu Sumaila, has called on the Presidency and the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to urgently probe the circumstances that led to the party’s loss of Sumaila/Takai Federal Constituency at the elections tribunal on Friday.
The elections tribunal sitting in Kano ruled that the APC did not have a candidate for Sumaila/Takai Constituency during the National Assembly elections held in February.
The tribunal, which based its ruling on the Supreme Court judgment that affirmed Shamsuddeen Dambazau as the APC candidate for the seat against Kawu, ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to immediately issue a certificate of return to the candidate of the political party with the next highest votes.
Kawu, who was the original candidate for the seat until Dambazau’s suit challenging his candidature, said in a statement on Friday that the APC national leadership should constitute a special panel to probe all those involved in the underhand dealings that led to the loss.
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It would be recalled that Kawu was picked as the consensus candidate for Sumaila/Takai Federal Constituency, where he went into the elections and won with wide margin.
Kawu Sumaila’s choice was as a result of the decision of Muhammad Baffa Takai, who had picked the APC ticket, to drop his ambition following series of persuasions on him so that Kawu would be compensated for being unfairly treated during the APC primaries for Kano South Senatorial Zone.
The former Senior Special Assistant to the President was compensated with the Sumaila/Takai Reps ticket so that he would not take the issue of APC primaries for Kano South Senatorial Zone, which he clearly won, to court.
In turn, Baffa Takai was made the Special Adviser to the State governor on community development.
However, Shamsuddeen Dambazau approached the high court and challenged Kawu’s nomination by the party and the court ruled in his favour.
Stressing that the tribunal has finally vindicated him, Kawu, a former two-term deputy minority leader of the house, said “I therefore call on the presidency and the national leadership of our party to take decisive action on this matter by probing it to ensure that all those that contributed to this are adequately sanctioned.”
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