Getting two votes at PDP primary was surprising, I thought I would score zero – Shehu Sani

Former Kaduna Central MP Shehu Sani said he was surprised to receive 2 votes in the recently concluded Peoples Democratic Party in Kaduna state.

Speaking in an interview with Punch, he said “internal democracy is one of the most important areas of democracy that needs to be clean and reorganized”.

Said Sani;

I am not a new politician and I am not a beginner but what I have found and what has been attacked by the community is the delegation system where delegates bribe delegates to vote for them. The basic, democratic process in which leaders emerge should be clean and transparent but what has happened in the politics of this country is that we have embraced what is wrong, evil and evil as a ghostly political practice.

Internal democracy is one of the most important areas of democracy that needs to be clean and reorganized. A society can never have honest and respectable leaders if the process that led to their emergence is corrupt and corrupt.

It seems we have embraced a system of corruption and fraud where people are appointed as ambassadors and then paid to vote for someone. We are in a situation where hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of people are being used to select candidates for the general election. I have said before going to the primaries that I will not give a penny to any delegates and they should vote for me based on my honesty, loyalty and my Kaduna constituency agenda and stand by my words despite the pressure to part with money to give delegates to get votes .

But I insisted that I would not do it. We need to have indicators that will revolt against our democratic system from being oppressed by money launderers and criminals because the mission system makes it easy for fundraisers, and god-fathers to apply and have strong roots in our society through the influence of money.

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My experience was well anticipated, I knew it would be difficult for the delegates to vote for me. But I want change and one must sacrifice to open the political arena and remove the corruption that the ruling parties and opposition parties have accepted as normal.

Sani also claimed that Kaduna Primary School had been vandalized by politicians who gave money to delegates to get their vote.

He also added;

I made it clear at the time and I expect to be challenged by any member of the APC council in Kaduna. When delegates gathered before the 2014 election, I told them in white and white that I would not remove any kobo to be elected to any office. And at that moment, the opposition was desperate for victory.

And this time, I repeated the same thing but unfortunately, I could not succeed. What I always do is bring this issue to the forefront of the national discourse. That if we want to clean and respect our country, we must start with domestic politics. If our politics is dirty, there is no way we can get clean people in positions of power. One of the reasons why people in power feel unresponsive to anyone is that they feel everyone has value. And that people did not vote for them but bought a seat / position.

I want people to negotiate, how can we benefit as a country if the system of incumbent leadership is full of corruption? I can say without hesitation that I have never bribed any delegate or party official to represent the party in 2014, I won primaries.

As an elected person, you can make donations for things like office furniture or pay off debts of office workers. You can pay bills for other group activities; you can contribute to those features. But in order to organize delegates and get into the auction or payment system when they say the chosen person has given us R100,000, you have to give us R200,000. It was so polluted in Kaduna Province that some delegates reached N3m per candidate, and some even collected $ 5000 in the Kaduna National Assembly elections. So how do you expect people who pay messengers to respect voters? Impossible! Our politics are so expensive and so advanced that young people are deprived of the opportunity to run for office because we have no money.

So sacrifice, what I have done, to make it possible, is the first time for the Nigerian people to talk about the mission system and the corruption that is found in it. The second is to enable the new generation to participate in politics when they now set the stage to focus on how politicians raise money before the first election and win elections.

If we say delegates should be paid and it is okay, we have no right to challenge voters when they say they should be given the right to salt from the boat. It is the political process of those politicians who pollute the general public. We have come to the point where those who want to get votes share rice, motorcycles and cars. He knows that at some point, some who wanted to lose the election have to use hunters and guards, moving from house to house hunting for messengers to get their money back. So what kind of system?

I did not expect to have votes. Because I did not just write that I would not pay, I confronted the delegates one by one and told myself that I would not pay. Who voted for me, I do not know. I would like to know who voted for me.

An hour before we were to enter the primaries I confronted a messenger in the hall and told him that I would not give them money to vote for me, so I was expecting no votes. What made me do that is because I want the people of Nigeria to know that this is not the way elections should be conducted. Our politics are very corrupt. It is very expensive. And it is not possible to produce a clean set of new leaders in Nigeria, in a system that accepts, tolerates and accepts corruption in primaries. Corruption is so embedded in our politics that it has polluted our seats.