Speaker of the Nasarawa state House of Assembly, Hon. Balarabe Abdullahi Ibrahim, has been fingered in the ballot box snatching that characterised the conduct of the primaries to elect the All Progressives Congress (APC ) chairmanship candidate for Toto local government council in the forthcoming council polls.
The State Independent Electoral Commission has fixed the council polls in all the 13 local government areas in the state, for May 26, 2018, with the congress taking place across the state yesterday. However, the primaries was disrupted in Toto, when the speaker allegedly deployed his security details and others to scare away party faithful, and in the ensuing fracas ‘sped’ off with the ballot box in his official vehicle.
Similarly, the exercise was dogged by allegations of delegates’ list swapping and missing names. But Speaker Ibrahim has described the allegation as a ‘figment’ of lies, saying some people became uncomfortable with Dauda Nuhu’s lead during the exercise and therefore went ahead to disrupt the congress. However, Blueprint gathered that Ibrahim’s security details as well as the police deployed to provide security coverage for the exercise, shot into the air severally to make way for the box snatchers to escape. One of the delegates who participated in the exercise, Idris Musa, said the speaker, who became jittery after seeing that Dauda, his preferred candidate, was trailing behind by a wide margin, ordered that the counting of the votes be put on hold when officials made to start counting at the end of the exercise.
He said it was in the midst of trying to understand the speaker’s motive that his security details stormed the hall of the voting and carted away the boxes. Another delegate, who is also the Organising Secretary of the party in the local government, Abubakar Daura, said at least two persons hit by the bullets fi red are currently hospitalised in Toto and Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital respectively. Narrating his experience, AbdulRashid Yahaya, who had bruises all over his body, said he was pushed and kicked severally by the police when he tried to protect the box. Mr Audu Nuhu and Pharmacist Yahaya Ahmed Baba became the leading candidates after one of the contending front runners, Hon. Zakari, stepped down and directed his supporters to vote for Baba.
The speaker had been accused of attempt to foist his candidate on the party when he was said to have misled the state executives of the party into believing that Dauda had been adopted as the party’s sole candidate in the local government. This development necessitated protests in Lafia, the state capital, by the APC stakeholders in Toto local government. It’s untrue -Speaker But Speaker Ibrahim, in a response to the text message sent by our reporter, described the allegation as untrue, saying Nuhu was leading and that this sent jitters down the spine of his opponent and his supporters.
He said: “That is not true. It was obvious Prince Nuhu was leading and his opponents were no longer comfortable and resolved in throwing stones and other dangerous weapons to all categories of people who were presence at the venue. You may wish to find out more.”
