Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Mr. Rotimi
Akeredolu, SAN, as the governorship
candidate of the All Progressives Congress,
APC, is already tearing the party apart.
Signs that all is still not well in the party
even after the initial calm that followed last
weekend’s governorship primaries are
becoming more visible and is threatening
the fragile peace in the party.
The aftermath of the primaries has claimed
a Senatorial Chairman of the party, Chief
Gboyega Adedipe, who stepped down
following Akeredolu’s emergence.
Interestingly, more leaders may dump the
APC, as some of the aspirants are already
in talks with political parties that are yet to
conduct their primaries with the hope of
picking their tickets.
The highly monetised election saw the
preferred aspirant of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed
Tinubu, the national leader of APC, Dr
Olusegun Abraham taking the second
position behind Akeredolu.
Akeredolu took many by surprise as political
pundits had posited that he would perform
dismally at the polls.
Padded delegate’s list
However, the outcome shook many to the
marrows and huge dust is being raised by
some of the aspirants, who allege that the
delegates’ list was padded to favour
Akeredolu in Saturday’s election.
Rejection of the result by two frontline
contestants and calls for fresh election have
trailed the exercise in the last one week.
Two aspirants, Prof Ajayi Boroffice and Dr
Bode Ayorinde both members of the
National Assembly have preferred not to
lend their voices to the alleged padded list,
perhaps, for political reason and to secure
their present positions.
Aggrieved aspirants kick
First to complain over doctoring of the
delegates’ list released to the aspirants a
few hours to the election was the former
governorship candidate of the PDP in the
2012 governorship election, Chief Olusola
Oke.
Also, Dr. Olusegun Abraham, who had earlier
conceded defeat recanted and described the
result as fraudulent and unacceptable.
Some aggrieved leaders of the party in the
state have picked holes in the election
describing it as a sham.
Oke said in a statement, a day after the
election, that the postponement of the
election twice was “as we later learnt from
the process of the primary, to allow time to
perfect the rigging strategy of the primaries
to return a pre-agreed aspirant.
“The illicit substitution of the delegates’ list
officially given to the aspirants from
Abuja,less than 12 hours to the primary was
meant to allow persons who were never
members of the executive of the party to
participate as voters in the primaries.
Speaking through the Director General of
his campaign Organisation, Bola Fisayo, Oke
said, “let the people of Ondo State and in
particular members of the APC in the state
not be deceived, what they saw on
television as a process was a voodoo. The
primary election was everything but credible
primary.”
On his part, Dr Olusegun Abraham who was
the “annointed” aspirant of Tinubu, who had
earlier conceded defeat and congratulate
Akeredolu recanted by rejecting the result
which he markedly declared as fraudulent.
Abraham kick
Abraham declared that “the result was
unacceptable to him considering the
staggering facts of anomalies that have
since emerged to the demerit of the
exercise.
Speaking through the Director General of his
campaign Organisation, Chief Olu Adegboro,
Abraham said he was baffled by “the gale of
allegations and facts of malpractices that
have since mared the conduct and process
of the Ondo gubernatorial primary election.
He said: “It is now beyond doubt that the
delegates’ list used on the day of the
primary election was doctored and strangely
injected with a mind blowing number of
delegates who are neither executive
members of our party nor statutory
delegates.
“To say the least, the manipulation of the
delegates’ list, highly skewed accreditation
process and the entire processes leading to
the conduct of the primary election has cast
the darkest stain on the result of the
primary election held on the 3rd September,
2016.
“Against this background, coupled with the
change and integrity that our party preaches
and practices, and having widely consulted
with my numerous supporters, I have
reached the hour of decision to fall back on
the internal mechanism of our great party to
seek redress so that at the end justice will
be served and more importantly, our
democracy may endure.
“To this end, the outcome of the September
3rd APC Governorship primaries in Ondo
State is unacceptable and I hereby appeal
against same.”
Also, some leaders of the party have
petitioned the appeal committee equally
alleging fraud in the election and called for a
fresh exercise.
The petition signed by chairman of the party
in the Central, East and West senatorial
districts, Messrs Adegboyega Adedipe,
Akintunde Samuel and Adeola Ademulegun
respectively, said the result failed to reflect
the reality of the election.
They alleged in their petition that “A strange
delegates’ list was introduced on the night
of the election after everybody had gone to
sleep only for us to wake up in the morning
of the election to see a massively corrupted
delegates’ list.”
“Names of 47 percent of the delegates in
Ondo East were either deleted or substituted
with people who are unknown to the party
as executive members. Some of the injected
names are not even aware of the
development and so did not come for the
primary election.
“In all, a total of 64 names were injected
into the delegates’ list. The names were
unknown to the party. For instance,
somebody who never contested any
election, and some even unknown to the
party suddenly became ward chairmen in
wards four, six, two and seven of Ondo East
Local Government.
“Our total valid delegates are 135 out of
which 64 were disenfranchised, meaning 47
of the delegates on the unlawful list were
illicit voters.
“While Akeredolu got 669 votes at the
primaries, Abraham got 635 votes.
Ondo PDP call for probe
Also worried by the monetised election, the
Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the state
has called on President Muhammadu Buhari
to probe the alleged N5 billion allegedly
spent by the aspirants of the APC during
the primary election.
It’s publicity Secretary, Banji Okunomo, said,
“It was gathered that the aspirants involved
in a cash bazaar to induce the delegates at
the elections, an act that is unprecedented
in the history of party primaries in Ondo
state.
“If the Buhari government fails to urgently
probe the sources of money wasted on the
APC primary in Ondo State, it would be
difficult for any sane person to countenance
the seriousness of the acclaimed fight
against corruption by the APC led
government.”
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