The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Abibata Shanni Mahama Zakariah has expressed displeasure at the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) for disregarding her concerns about the conduct of the Member of Parliament for Yendi Constituency, Farouk Aliu Mahama and the party’s Northern Regional Executives.
Speaking in an interview on Citi TV, madam Abibata Mahama alleged that Mr. Farouk Mahama and the regional executives have failed to adhere to the party’s guidelines for conducting internal elections and are bending the rules to secure an outcome which will favor him in the upcoming Parliamentary primaries of the party.
The MASLOC CEO, who is set to contest the MP in the primaries, said although the conduct of Mr. Farouk Mahama and the executives has been reported to the party, it has failed to take any action against them.
This, she asserted, is unfair to her and her loyalists whom, she alleged, have been sidelined by the MP.
“If a party comes out with guidelines and people just disregard the guidelines, I expect that sanctions to be applied. Because if we are a democratic party, everybody has equal rights. Nobody has rights more than the other. In the case of Yendi, how do you build an album when there is no election? The party guidelines say elections and like I said Yendi have a way of doing their politics so even before the guidelines came, they had had a constituency executive committee meeting and they agreed that all the old polling station executives were going to be maintained and the newly created ones which are 37 polling stations, making a total of 138 people, that one is something that they will have to discuss further to see how they go about it.
Since then, there hasn’t been any sitting of the elections committee and only for us to see a register flying on social media purported to be polling station executive album,” she stated.
She continued “The composition of the elections committee, per the party’s guidelines, must include the Chairperson of the Council of Elders or his rep, a Chairperson of the patrons or his rep then other officers who automatically supposed to be part of the committee. In the case of Yendi, we have 2 council of elders on the committee. The rep for the patrons who was chosen by the Chairman of the patrons who is now the member of the council of state, Alhaji Amidu Amadu was not admitted. The Constituency Chairman who is the landlord of the constituency, as far as the NPP is concerned, meeting was held and he was not there.
When these things happened, petitions were written, first of all, to the chairperson of the elections committee (but no action has been taken)”.
Madam Abibata Mahama cannot fathom why the party would disregard her concerns about developments in the constituency in such a manner considering the contribution of her father to the party.
She said her father toiled for the party for years, making the Yendi Constituency NPP’s stronghold. She added that during the lifetime of her father, the party had never lost the Yendi seat.
It, however, lost the seat in the 2008 Elections despite the fact that the then Vice President, Aliu Mahama was from the constituency. This, she intimated, is an indication that the party’s dominance in the Constituency is as result of her father’s hard work.
She, therefore, finds it unfair that Farouk Mahama, whose father could not do that much for the party, would be given preferential treatment over her.
“I have been in Yendi and I know the gains my late father made for Yendi Constituency. The party knows the history of Yendi Constituency. People talk about Yendi Constituency as being a stronghold of NPP. How did it become a stronghold of the NPP? My father was the first MP for the area in 1969 and he was Deputy Minister for Agric under the Busia’s regime.
In 1979, he came as an MP for PFP and consistently through his life, he labored for the party at the local level and at the national level. There has always been peace in Yendi Constituency. We never lost Yendi Constituency until 2008. That tells you a lot. My father died in 1997 even before President Kufuor became president. In his lifetime, we never lost Yendi. But in 2008, we lost it and we had a vice president who came from Yendi but we lost the seat. So when people try to play politics as if some people are more important than others, I think things have to be put in the right perspective,” she recounted.
Madam Abibata Mahama said this while reacting to the chaos which characterized the polling station executives’ elections of the party in the constituency.
According to her, the party, as it had always been the practice in the constituency, reached consensus on how to go about its internal elections prior to the opening of nomination for the polling station executive positions.
But the MP, after what, she believes is his failure to live up to expectations, together with his loyalists who formed the Constituency Election Committee has disregarded the consensus which was reached and the party’s guidelines as they skim to skew the elections in his favor.
This, she claimed, has thrown the party in the Yendi Constituency into a state of confusion and chaos, disturbing the peace it had enjoyed over years.
