Shock as Kaduna APC leaders rebuff Sani’s second term bid

As intrigues continue to dog the path of the leadership and members of All Progressive Congress (APC) in the process of picking the party’s candidate for next year’s election, many of the big names have already started falling by the wayside.
 
The Senator representing Kaduna Central District, Shehu Sani, is one of those who have lost out in the bid to return to their post, as he was said to have been rejected by the party leadership in the state.Although the Senator has been having a running battle with his governor, Ahmed El-Rufai and the Abuja leadership of the party, he backed out of a plan to defect to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when some of his colleagues in the Red Chamber changed parties two months ago.
   
It was rumoured that Sani sought an understanding with the presidency to remain in APC on the ground that he would be given an automatic ticket for a second term, a proposition that was allegedly rejected by the party leadership in Kaduna, who accused him of several anti-party activities.
   
As the primary election to pick the candidates approached and having failed to secure the cooperation of the Kaduna branch of the party, Sani was said to have shown more determination to convince Abuja and other stakeholders on the need to give him a return ticket.He was said to have unsuccessfully sought the support of Kano State governor, Umar Abdullahi Ganduje and his Katsina counterpart, Aminu Bello Masari, to pleaded with President Muhammadu Buhari on his behalf after failing to achieve same with the intervention of Senator Aliyu Wammako.
     
A source told The Guardian in Abuja yesterday that the politics of Sani’s second term ticket is deeper than what the various failed interventions could resolve and that the leadership had made up its mind on the issue.According to the source, “The problem all the interventions encountered is that Shehu Sani had gone too far in burning his bridges in Kaduna. It is said that a compendium of his comments since 2015 ridiculing Buhari himself, the APC and the governor, El-Rufai, has been circulated to key leaders.
     
“This document showed that Shehu Sani does not hold even the President in high esteem. So his recent good-boy posture is being dismissed as just the desperate actions of a man who wants to remain in the Senate.”
     
The source, which said senior politicians are surprised that Sani expects his latest actions to be seen as genuine, added, “This is a man who printed posters without the APC logo and boasted that he would defect. He has not even tried to mend fences with the people he most offended in Kaduna. “The party in Kaduna is said to be in no mood to reward disloyalty, after Shehu Sani had treated them with contempt for more than three years. We expect him to grumble and moralise after he loses the primary. We will not be surprised if he even creates some drama.”