The immediate past Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, is scheming to manoeuvre his way to become the governorship candidate of the Labour Party in Nasarawa State, after losing the Peoples Democratic party’s governorship ticket.
Maku’s bid to become Nasarawa governor on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, suffered a deadly blow when he lost the party’s primaries to Yusuf Agabi, who polled 214 votes to the ex-minister’s 160, the result which Maku had since rejected.
However, rather than remain within his party to either support the winner or challenge the primary in court, Maku is believed to be strongly working with some leaders of the Labour Party to become the party’s candidate.
A major hindrance to the ex-minister’s plans, however, is the firm stance of Innocent Lagi, elected unopposed at the Labour Party primary held in Akwanga on December 10, to retain his candidacy of the Labour Party.
Party sources in Lafia told our correspondent that since Maku realised the PDP would not revert the result of the primaries, he has been holding series of meeting with Labour Party leaders including Lagi.
Indeed, the Labour Party candidate confirmed to our correspondent at the weekend that he had held two meetings with Maku. “I had two meetings with Maku wanting to know what was happening. I made it clear to him and showed him certified true copies of my certificate as the candidate of the party because the party didn’t tell him that primaries were already conducted,” Lagi said at the weekend.
The candidate said he was not going to let go of his mandate, and was going to take his party and Maku to court for trying to steal his mandate.
“It is true I am taking Labaran Maku and the Labour Party to court. Because after the primaries, the Labour Party is trying to sell a mandate of the people of the party from Nasarawa State,” stressing that the Labour Party leaders have refused to give him “the INEC (governorship) forms on the grounds that they want to substitute me.”
He said he was currently “taking proactive moves before the matter is sabotaged beyond repairs.” “The party had already concluded primaries and I was returned unopposed as the candidate for the Labour Party in a valid primaries conducted on the 10th and monitored by INEC and the report submitted to INEC,” he said.
When contacted, the INEC official in charge of monitoring party primaries in Nasarawa, Fidelis Usar, confirmed that the commission monitored the primaries and Lagi was the candidate of the party, but the party Chairman in Nasarawa, Aisha Adamu, declined to comment.
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