With less than one year into his four-year administration, friends and well wishers of Governor Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa of Kaduna State are already strategizing on how to return the governor in 2015 general elections.
LEADERSHIP learnt that the friends of Yakowa are holding secret meetings in all the three zones of the state, and mapping out plans on how to market their candidate in 2015.
A group known as Kaduna Rebirth, which confirmed the story to LEADERSHIP, released a press statement, saying that “Yakowa is legally and constitutionally right to contest 2015 guber elections.”
The statement signed by the coordinator of the group, Alhaji Ahmed Isiaq, further said that “from all indications, Yakowa can and should contest the 2015 general election as a right.”
“We take note of section 182 (1) (b) of the constitution which provides that a person shall not be qualified for election to the governor of a state if he has been elected to such office at any two previous elections.
“Now, we ask: has Yakowa been elected into office as governor on two previous election? Therefore, the issue of Yakowa being in second term because he has already done one term after the resignation of? Vice President Sambo is nothing but an act of misinterpreting the constitution of the land,” the statement read.
To this end, the group further argued that Yakowa was eminently qualified to vie for a second term.