Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has confirmed that Senate president Ahmad Lawan will not be returning to the Red Chamber in 2023.
Gatekeepers News reports that this confirmation follows INEC’s affirmation of Bashir Machina as the winner of the All Progressives Congress (APC) primary for the Yobe North Senatorial District.
According to a certified true copy of INEC’s report from May 28, 2022, primary election, Machina scored 289 votes out of 300 delegates, corroborating the politician’s public claim that he won the primary and legally emerged candidate.
The document which was certified by the electoral office on June 23, 2022, did not mention Senate President Ahmad Lawan who has been labouring to take over the victory of Machina’s mandate in collusion with the party’s national chairman Abdullahi Adamu.
Adamu had listed Lawan as the candidate of the APC for the Yobe North senatorial election slated for February 2023, claiming that a primary had secretly held in which Lawan purportedly emerged the winner.
Although Machina has been certified the winner by the electoral office, he will still need to put additional fights pending the time INEC post candidates standing for election across different political parties in the coming weeks.
The Senate President started making efforts to seize the ticket from Machina after losing at the ruling party’s presidential convention, which was won handily by Bola Tinubu on June 8.
