An All Progressives Congress governorship aspirant, Olusola Oke, has said he will wait for his party’s Election Appeal Committee to decide on the primary held in Ondo State on September 3 before he decides what to do next.
Oke and two other aspirants, Segun Abraham and Senator Ajayi Boroffice, have challenged the results of the primary, won by Rotimi Akeredolu, alleging that the delegates’ list used for the election was doctored.
Speaking with our correspondent on the telephone, the APC chieftain expressed confidence that the committee would do justice to his petition.
Oke said, “You will observe that I have maintained silence over the matter, deciding not to make any statement. I like to follow due process. I have articulated all the infractions observed in the primary and put them before the internal mechanism (of the party) for redress.”
A group of election observers, Accredited Observer Group, which monitored the primary, similarly alleged that the election was characterised with irregularities.
According to the leader of the group, Richard Adebayo, the accreditation of delegates was hastily done without proper screening.
Meanwhile, major opposition parties in the state, Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party, have criticised the APC for its inability to conduct the governorship primary without any disagreement.
National Chairman of the LP, Abdulkadir Abdulsalam, and National Publicity Secretary of the SDP, Alfa Mohammed, spoke on behalf of their parties in separate interviews with inner room , in Abuja, on Saturday.
Abdulkadir noted that it was a shame that the APC could not conduct an election within its party without rancour.
“The APC is only doing things the Peoples Democratic Party way. Those in the APC are operating that way because they have simply adopted the PDP blueprint of doing things. If they could not conduct a simple primary to choose a candidate for the Ondo State governorship poll, it shows nothing has changed and what is happening is a dress rehearsal for what they plan to do during the governorship election,” he said.
According to the SDP’s spokesperson, Mohammed, the APC does not show that it is properly organised.
Attempts made to get the reaction of the national leadership of the APC were futile as the National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, and the National Secretary, Mai Mala Buni, could not be reached for comments.
Phone calls to the telephone line of Odigie-Oyegun were not picked and a text message sent to him was not replied. Calls made to Buni’s line indicated that it was either “switched off or out of coverage area” as of the time of filing this report.
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