BEVERLY HILLS, October 07, (THEWILL) – Senator Shehu Sani has lost the APC ticket for Kaduna Central Senatorial District after the primaries conducted by delegates from the zone in which he polled only 15 votes.
This was despite the granting of automatic ticket to Sani, who represents the senatorial district, by the National Working Committee of the APC, led by the party’s National Chairman, Mr Adams Oshiomhole
While the national headquarters of the APC was said to have granted automatic ticket to the incumbent senator, Mallam Uba Sani, who is Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s preferred candidate, was not cleared to contest the election.
Sani had earlier indicated that he would not participate in what he called a “Kangaroo election organised by the Kaduna State Government.’’
The election was conducted at the Murtala Square in Kaduna on Saturday.
The Returning Officer, Prof.Eddie Floyd-Igbo declared Uba Sani, a Special Adviser to Governor Nasiru El-Rufa’i, as the winner with 2,088 votes, while his closest rival, Usman Ibrahim-Sardauna was said to have secured only 129 votes.
Also, a former senator, Gen. Sani Sale, who represented the constituency from 2011 to 2015 secured 55 votes, followed by Shamsudeen Giwa with 6 votes while 45 votes were declared invalid.
The election was conducted amidst uncertainty as to the position of the National Working Committee of the party which had earlier cleared Shehu Sani as the sole candidate for the ticket in the zone.
El-Rufai had warned President Muhammadu Buhari that there would be serious consequences if Sani should win a return ticket to the red chamber in 2019.
El-Rufai stated this in a four-page memo addressed to Buhari, dated October 2, titled, ‘Forwarding of a compendium of Shehu Sani’s denigration of President Buhari, the APC and the Governor of Kaduna State’.
The governor chronicled the activities of the Kaduna State senator since he was elected into the Senate and concluded that Buhari’s Presidency between 2019 and 2023, would suffer serious attacks from the National Assembly with people like Sani there.
He also alleged that Sani mocked Buhari when the President explained, during a trip to Benue State, that the Federal Government handled the Dapchi episode better than Jonathan handled Chibok.
According to him, Shehu Sani wrote, ‘The Spiderman, who couldn’t protect Chibok blasted by the Spiderman, who couldn’t protect Dapchi from alien invasion’.
El-Rufai added that when the President travelled to London in April 2018 for medical consultation, Sani ridiculed the trip on his Facebook page, by saying, ‘Voyage to London; season 3’.
El-Rufai said he would have heeded Buhari’s request for the recall of Sani sometime in January this year but for the huge cost such process would require.
He said, “Your Excellency will recall that earlier this year, you directed me to initiate processes to recall Shehu Sani from the Senate, to punish his repeated acts of contempt and disloyalty.
“The party executives in his ward in Kaduna suspended him from the APC in December 2015 for negative comments about your Excellency. It was later extended to indefinite suspension.
“Following your directives, our team in Kaduna studied what was being done in Kogi State (then) regarding the recall of Dino and drew out a budget. Upon an examination of the cost and loopholes in the recall process as brutally exposed in Dino Melaye’s case, and in recognition of the imminent preparations for the next election, it was decided that it might be more prudent to oust him at the ballot.
“We recognised that there was no way our party members in Kaduna Central will present him again for election, and therefore, concluded that rejection by the party was a more effective and less costly option.
“Recently, we noticed unsavoury attempts at the national headquarters of the party to treat this same Shehu (Sani) as if he had been a loyal party member. The ostensible reason for the romance with this most disloyal and untrustworthy person was said to be the political arithmetic in the Senate.
“The proponents of this immoral elevation of a traitor failed to acknowledge that Shehu Sani was the loudest among the irresponsible lot that were undermining the Federal Government and threatening the APC with defection.
“When his collaborators began defecting (sic), he could not (do the same) because there was no place (for him) to go. The PDP in Kaduna State refused to guarantee him an automatic ticket. While looking for a new home, he pasted posters all over Kaduna without a party name or logo.
“The APC does not need Shehu Sani. He is the one who now needs the party he has ridiculed and rebelled against since 2015. Let no one mistake his desperation to return to the Senate as the sincere actions of a reformed person. There is no contrite man, but one engaged in practised pretence for the sake of a ticket.”
El-Rufai added that the people of Kaduna State were not in a hurry to forgive Sani over the role he played in denying them the Senate’s approval for the $350m World Bank loan requested by the government of the state.
