Nine governorship aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have described the ward congresses of the party as a nullity.
They spoke yesterday evening at a briefing tagged: “The Impunity in PDP NWC Wanted Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State to Carry Out that he Declined is What They Have Used Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State to Carry Out in Edo State.”
To them, therefore, the congresses which the Governor of Oyo State was supposed to conduct which he declined and was replaced by the Enugu State Governor, Mr. Peter Mbah, is of no effect.
On behalf of the G-9, one of the aspirants, Anselm Ojezua, said at exactly 12 noon, “Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State placed a call to the Edo State Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, that he had just arrived in Benin and was awaiting the arrival of Governor Kefas of Taraba State and asked to meet all the 10 aspirants for a briefing before the commencement of the congresses.”
According to Ojezua till 5pm, the nine of the 10 aspirants were yet to hear from Governor Mbah and his team, alleging that they (Mbah and his team) were in Edo State Government House filling original sheets for congresses not conducted.
He said up till the time of their briefing, the nine of them had no access to the five-man panel with two state governors as members, declaring therefore that there were congresses done in Edo State.
Ojezua said, “We want to put it on record that this is perhaps one of the worst attempts that PDP has made to organise primaries in this country. On 29th January, we went for screening in Abuja while we were there, we noticed a publication in Vanguard Newspapers on the venue for the congresses for our primaries.
“We noticed a sharp change of what was customary and traditional in PDP since 1998 and we raised issues with the National Working Committee (NWC), the acting national chairman, assured us that it will be taken care of and truly we can attest to the fact that they corrected it.
“The National Working Committee resolved that the congresses will be held at the collation centres and each wards and that is how we came back to Benin expecting to meet with the committee that was set up to organise the congresses for the three ad-hoc delegates
“Between Friday and Sunday, we have seen three different ad-hoc electoral committee lists, first was the one that had His Excellency. Seyi Makinde as chairman and Senator Manu as secretary. A day after, we had yet another list with Seyi Makinde as chairman and one Pascal Adigwe as secretary.
“Today, we had yet another list with Peter Mbah as chairman and Pascal Adigwe as secretary. We do know that the first one must have been the one approved by the National Working Committee. We are reliably informed that the National Working Committee has not met since the last time they approved that list. Now, we do not even know which one is which.
“We found that contrary to the list the party sent to INEC, another list was flying around with a prominent list of government officials from the Edo state government to perform very sensitive assignments in relation to this process.
“What is even worse is that the committee has not even arrived in Benin; we were later informed that he has declined his appointment; it was only today we were informed that Governor Mbah is now to take the position of the chairman,” he said.
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