Primaries: I’ll resist rigging -Atiku

Posted by admin Headlines, National Politics Friday, January 7th, 2011

A former vice-president and a presidential aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on Thursday, vowed to resist any attempt to manipulate the forthcoming presidential primaries of the party by its leadership in favour of any aspirant.

Addressing newsmen in Abuja, the former vice-president also rolled out conditions to be met by the leadership of the party for the outcome of the presidential primaries to be acceptable to him.

Alhaji Abubakar, who spoke through the Director-General of his presidential campaign organisation, Senator Ben Obi, said from all indications, “he preparations for the conduct of the PDP presidential primaries appear to be going on in extreme secrecy.”

According to him, “this makes the entire process suspect and places it under grave threat, going by the omissions noted,” adding that he owed it a duty to alert his supporters, party delegates and Nigerian public about the grand plan to manipulate the entire process in favour of a particular aspirant.

He said it was disheartening to note that less than five days to the screening of the presidential aspirants, no presidential screening committee had been put in place, while the national convention committee that was to handle the primaries was also not in place.

He lamented that all efforts to see that the leadership of the party invited all the aspirants for a meeting to hold consultations on how to conduct free, fair and acceptable primaries had failed.

He disclosed that the conduct of the ongoing party primaries across the states of the federation had further heightened the fears being entertained by the campaign organisation, with the manipulation of the process in such states as Plateau, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Ogun, Oyo, Yobe and a host of others.

He, however, gave three conditions to be met for the outcome of the presidential primaries to be acceptable to his campaign organisation, which included a meeting between the leadership of the party and the various campaign organisations; a demand that the list of delegates to the primaries must be made public in the print media and ground rules that would guide the conduct of the primary must be agreed upon by all the parties involved.

-Tribunewp_posts