CPP affirms Madam Zelia Issah as candidate for Sagnarigu
The Convention People’s Party (CPP) has affirmed Madam Zelia Issah as the party’s parliamentary candidate for the Sagnarigu Constituency in the Northern Region.
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According to the party, as of the close of nominations by the party in the Northern Region on Monday, September 26, 2016, it was only Madam Issah who had filed her nominations and the party has subsequently endorsed her as the party’s parliamentary candidate for Sagnarigu for the 2016 general election.
Response
The party’s Northern Regional Educational Secretary, Mr Nayi Adam Alhassan, stated this at a press conference held by the party in Tamale last Monday to respond to a raging controversy over who was the parliamentary candidate for the party in the constituency.
The response of the party had come after media reports on the party’s selection of a parliamentary candidate which stirred some confusion within the party in the constituency.
Nominations
But at the press conference organised by the regional secretariat of the party, Mr Alhassan, said at the close of nominations, it was Madam Zelia Issah who had picked and submitted her nomination form to contest on the ticket of the party for the Sagnarigu Constituency.
He, therefore, discounted the claims by the 2012 CPP parliamentary candidate for Sagnarigu Mr Alhassan Suhuyini that Madam Zelia‘s selection as the 2016 parliamentary candidate for the constituency was illegal and unconstitutional.
Mr Alhassan stated that “the Sagnarigu Constituency has only one parliamentary candidate and she is Madam Issah Zelia.”
Explaining further, Mr Alhassan said the party opened nominations for its parliamentary candidates since March 2016 and by the closing date, Mr Suhuyini never picked a nomination form to contest the Sagnarigu seat and therefore, his claim of preparing the grounds to contest was false.
Her candidature
Asked when Madam Zelia became a member of the CPP, Mr Nuhu Jingli, the party’s Northern Regional Secretary, said Madam Zelia had been a card-bearing member of the CPP since 2009, and the membership card she presented to them when she picked the nomination form was found to be genuine and authentic, hence her membership was unquestionable.
The Education Secretary of the Party, Mr Alhassan, who read the statement on behalf of the party at the press conference added that the issue of Madam Issah Zelia being a card-bearing member of the NDC was of no consequential value to the CPP, stating that “the least said about it the better.”
The decision to contest
Mr Alhassan said the decision by Madam Zelia to contest on the ticket of the CPP for the 2016 elections in the Sagnarigu Constituency was born out of the fact that the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP), Alhaji A.B.A Fuseini, had failed the people of Sagnarigu and, therefore, she felt she had what it took to represent the people in Parliament to champion their concerns which the sitting MP, who was also the Deputy Regional Minister, had failed to do.