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| Adamu Muazu |
A major crisis is brewing
within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) following fallout from party primaries.
Across the country, many aggrieved aspirants who were
short-changed in the process are crying foul and threatening to defect en-masse
to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) party in order to frustrate
the ambition of imposed candidates.
Checks across the states
reveal that many of the governorship
aspirants in state like Rivers, Adamawa, Enugu, Taraba, Sokoto and Kebbi States
have vowed to give a bad blow to the ambitions of so-called anointed candidates
and work against the success of the party in favor of the opposition party
wherever they can do so.
One of the aggrieved
aspirant today in Abuja appeared on a Radio Program (Ray Power), the apparent, a former deputy
governor in Sokoto state, Mukhtar Shehu
Shagari said that the result declared in the state was written by somebody and
that no primary election was conducted. "I personally went to meet with
the election committee and told them that with the situation on ground election
cannot hold because delegates were
allowed to enter the venue and security situation was not encouraging and I
told them to postpone the election, not only that I even wrote it and handed it
over to them but they ignored me. Now they have announced the result written by
one person and said that I had just only one vote out of 984 delegates while
the imposed aspirant got 983 ".
Mr. Shagari has asked the
party to rescind its decision and re-conduct a fresh election for all the
aspirants or deal with the consequences.
"Therefore I wish to
call on the national leadership of our party (PDP) to take note that there was
no gubernatorial primary election for Sokoto PDP, disband the electoral
committee which by the attitude of its chairman, cannot guarantee a free and fair
conduct of the primary election.
My appeal to the leadership
of our great party, the PDP is to formally and immediately set up an unbiased
Electoral Committee made up of credible men and women of proven integrity to
conduct the Gubernatorial primaries for Sokoto state within the shortest
possible time.”, Shagari stated.
Shagari shocked listeners
when he said that APC was an organized party in the state coupled with the
likes of its candidate, Aminu Tambuwal. He maintained that if PDP fails to
field him as the flag bearer the party will lose in the state. Though Shagari did not reveal his next line of
action but a reliable source within the party said that he has perfected
his plan to pitch his tent with the APC.
In Rivers State 15 aspirants
alleged that their names were deleted from the list of contestants for the
state governorship primaries, leaving only
Nyesom Wike, a former education minister imposed on the state PDP by the
first lady, Patience Jonathan. The aggrieved aspirants recently held a joint
press briefing asking for outright cancellation of the purported governorship
primary. According to a reliable source close to the aspirants, many of them
have perfected plan to work for the emergence of APC candidate in the general election.
In Taraba State where the
party moved the governorship primary for the state to Abuja to enable the
fraudulent installation of a candidate favored by billionaire and former army
general, Theophilus Danjuma, the party reportedly sold the governorship slot to
General Danjuma, who selected Samuel Ortom-Darius Ishyaku, a former Minister of
the Niger Delta Affairs to get the ticket.
In Enugu State, three candidates have emerged
in a bitterly contested primary, they include Senator Ayogu Eze, Ifeanyi
Ugwuanyi and Professor Onyeke O. Onyeke, all from Enugu North senatorial zone
where the governorship slot had been zoned by the party.
Crisis started in the state
when the Electoral Panel arrived Enugu from Abuja with a different list of delegates which was reportedly handed to them
by the National Secretariat of the party. The bizarre occurrence forced all other the aspirants to conduct
parallel elections in their respective constituencies and declared themselves
winner. Feelers from the state indicated
that in the next few weeks some of the aggrieved aspirants will move en mass
with their supporters to the opposition party.
In Lagos, former Minister of
State for Defense, Musiliu Obanikoro has dragged the party to the court over
the shoddy conduct of the gubernatorial primary in the state and continued to
threaten fire and brimstone. The Lagos
governorship primary had a dubious distinction of producing more votes than the
number of the delegates at the convention that produced newcomer Jimi Agbaje as
governorship candidate.
In Oyo state where a former
Senate leader, Teslim Folarin emerged as
the PDP party flag bearer, many aggrieved candidates said elections did not
take place at all. The disagreement has forced a former governor of the state,
Alao Akala to move to the Labour Party
in protest against the manipulation that characterized the exercise, others took the party to court to get a
cancellation of the exercise.
Adamawa State primary which
later held in Abuja where the former chairman of Economic and Financial Crime
Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu emerged as the winner continues to feed
discontent in the party. A group of aspirants led by the incumbent governor of
the State, Bala Ngilari, met and decided to suspend Ribadu from the party at
the state level.
With the the emergence of
Muhammadu Buhari as the presidential flag bearer of the All Progressive
Congress (APC), the PDP is jittery that the APC stands to reap from its
internal crisis and disaffection of many party aspirants schemed out its
primaries.
Source: Sahara Reporters
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