All the federal lawmakers from Niger State were absent at a stakeholders meeting held at the All Progressives Congress secretariat in Minna, Niger State.
The meeting was called to decide the method to be used for the nomination of candidates for various elective positions in the state in next years election.
It was gathered that the three senators and four out of the nine House of Representatives members in the National Assembly on Tuesday evening did not turn up because of the ill treatment gotten from the party.
All aspirants for various positions on the platform of the party were invited to the meeting but these federal lawmakers were absent.
It was not known why the federal lawmakers did not attend the meeting but for sometime now it had been said they would defect from the party over the way and manner the executive and the party leadership were running the party and the state.
While the stakeholders meeting was going on, it was learnt that Senator David Umaru was busy distributing empowerment tools and scholarships to some youths in his senatorial zone.
Also in the last couple of months, the affected federal lawmakers had not attended the APC expanded caucus committee.
Some of them were even absent at the rally held at the Trade Fair Complex, where Governor Abubakar Sani Bello was endorsed for a second term last February.
Umaru, who appeared to be the spokesman for the federal lawmakers, rejected the endorsement, describing it as illegal.
It was learnt that at the stormy stakeholders meeting, which Governor Bello attended, discussed the issue of adopting direct or indirect primary method dominated the discussion.
According to an inside source, those opposed to the indirect primary method lost ground, making the meeting to adopt the direct primary.
Most of the aspirants, especially state legislators who spoke at the meeting, supported direct primary because the executive would not have “too much influence over the voters”.
The state Chairman, Alhaji Jibrin Imam, confirmed on Wednesday that the direct primary method would be used for electing candidates.