4 aspirants boycott Kogi PDP primary, alleged irregularities

Posted by admin Kogi, Party Politics, Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP), State News Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Few hours to the Kogi state governorship Peoples Democratic Party’s primary held in Lokoja township stadium yesterday, prominent aspirants in the race to Lugard House told journalists they were withdrawing from the race owing to what they alleged as government hijacking of the delegates.

Addressing newsmen in his residence, one of the leading aspirant,Adinoyi –Ojo Onukaba alleged that the whole exercise was full of insincerity as he said the state government has dubiously hijacked 75 percent of the list of the authentic delegates. He said as a party loyalist and a leading aspirant in the race, he had no access to the list of the delegates even few hours before the party primary saying his repeated complaints to the Ismaila Sambawa monitoring committee fell on deaf ears.

Onukaba said he was therefore boycotting the primary as the whole exercise lacks transparency and fairness and urged the national leadership of the party to cancel the primary and choose another venue for the primary outside the state. On Wednesday, evening, another aspirant, AVM Isaac Alfa also said he had opted out of the race due to perceived injustice in the selection of the delegates saying there was no any delegates’ congress held as required by the party guildlines.

Reports also reaching Daily Sun confirmed that one of the aspirant, a retired military officer, Saliu Atawodi also boycotted the primary due to the above reasons, even as Isah Echocho the former party standard bearer was also said to have pulled out from the race. With the boycotts of this aspirants, the contest was strictly between the governor’s in- law Idris Wada, Isah Kutepe and Philip Salawu, who is Idris deputy.

Meanwhile, about eight political parties have signified their intentions to contest for the decemebr 3rd governorship election with the affected party concluding their party primaries. The parties and their candidates are, Prince Abubakar Audu, Ation Congress of Nigeria, wife of Audu, Aisah Audu for the Justice party, Usman Ibrahim for the labour party and James Ocholi for the Congress for Progressive Change.

Others are Gowon Egbunu for National Transformational Party,and Otunba Babs Fabunmi for the All Nigeria Peoples Party.

-Sunwp_posts