Fresh Crisis Hits APC Over Governorship Primaries

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Post created on 4:25 pm

 

 

The All Progressives Congress governorship primaries held on Thursday deepened the crises in the party’s state chapters as some factions held parallel congresses while others boycotted the polls entirely.

The ruling party is currently battling crises in states including Rivers, Ogun, Oyo, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Osun, and Sokoto where factions are battling for supremacy.

Some aspirants in Ogun, Lagos, Rivers, and Ebonyi states faulted the delegate lists used for the primaries.

While opposing factions in Akwa Ibom State held parallel primaries, aggrieved aspirants and party chieftains boycotted the shadow elections in Rivers, Sokoto and Delta states, with some threating legal action.

In Delta State, the Deputy President of the Senate, Ovie Omo-Agege emerged winner.

Omo-Agege, who polled 1,190 votes, was returned unopposed by the 1,235 accredited delegates.

But some of the aggrieved members including the Minister of State for Labor and Employment, Festus Keyamo; Dr Cairo Ojougboh; and a former Speaker of Delta State House of Assembly, Mr Victor Ochei, were absent from the primary.

In Lagos State, two aspirants, Abdul-Ahmed Mustapha and Wale Oluwo, protested their exclusion from the primary of the party held at Onikan.

The aspirants in separate interviews said the party’s Lagos State Governorship Primary Election Committee and its screening committee prevented them from participating in the primary.

They threatened to seek legal action should the leadership of the party fail to address the issue.

Both Mustapha and Oluwo said the process that led to the announcement of Sanwo-Olu as the winner of the primary was not democratic.

The chairman of the election committee and former deputy governor of Borno State, Shettima Yuguda, announced Sanwo-Olu as the winner and claimed that both Mustapha and Oluwo did not participate in the election because they were not cleared by the screening committee of the party.