Politics
Victor Ochei, a frontline Delta State All Progressives Congress, APC, governorship aspirant, has called for the outright cancellation of penultimate Sunday’s governorship primary held at the Federal College of Education (Technical), Asaba, saying it was skewed to favour a particular aspirant, a flagrant infraction of the party’s primary guidelines.
Ochei, who spoke during an interactive session with the news media in Asaba, also alleged hoarding of delegates’ list from aspirants, coupled with inadequate security arrangement among others as some of the issues with the exercise.
According to him “The national chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole had in ab initio skewed the whole process in favour of his preferred aspirant based on his fixation, which should not be allowed to prevail in Delta state.”
On the issue of delegates’ list for the exercise, the former speaker maintained that the irreducible minimum in an electoral college contest is that the electorate is known to the aspirants so that they can canvas for their votes.
He further stated that Lawrence Onoja, a retired major-general, the chairman of the Nomination Panel, confirmed that the national chairman provided a list of delegates at 7.30pm on 29th Sept 2018, a few hours before the primary, which only Great Ogboru, one of the aspirants, confirmed he had access to in a meeting with the panel. In other words, there was the ulterior motive of tilting the process to a particular aspirant’s advantage.
Again Ochei said that there were other deliberate ploys to undermine the exercise, prominent amongst which were, the crude disruption of accreditation of delegates by Ogboru and his thugs which enabled voting without accreditation, poor lighting of the venue, porosity of security as thugs loyal to their preferred aspirant invaded the venue and subjected people to intimidation and harassment.
“All these glaring flagrant infractions and violation of the party’s primary guidelines leave one with no option than to seek for an outright cancellation of the exercise and a repeat, where all these anomalies can be corrected otherwise, the chairman and NWC will be seen as working against the democratic ideals of the APC which President Muhammadu Buhari advocates,” Ochei said.
– Oct. 5, 2018 @ 14:09 GMT |
Tags: Delta APC Guber Primary: Ochie calls for cancellation
