Ahead of the primaries to select her presidential candidate, the Peoples Democratic Party PDP is putting strong measures on ground to ensure The election will be very transparent.
Part of the measures according to the party chairman is that the photographs of all aspirants for its presidential ticket will be on the ballot papers for the party’s presidential primaries.
The disclosure was made by the party’s national chairman, Uche Secondus, when he hosted the European Union team, headed by Bridget Markussen, in his office on Wednesday, September 12, Punch reports.
According to Naij.com, The party boss also disclosed that works were ongoing concerning the compilation of the names of its national convention committee members.
He added that there would be nominees of all 13 presidential aspirants in all the committees which would be set up for the convention.
He said: “We are preparing to announce the convention committee soon so that the working committee will hand over to this committee, which will conduct the primary election.
“We believe that all the presidential aspirants will have nominees into very key important committees. The accreditation committee where the delegates will line up and then be identified, they would have nominees into that committee so that they are sure that no one is going to play any game.
“Then, the electoral committee which will be headed by the convention committee will also do all the necessary materials.
“In this case, the ballot papers we intend to use will have portraits of all the aspirants, and all the aspirants will be invited to view and calculate all the numbers and everything under the view of everyone before the election proper can start.
“We believe that those two critical areas should be properly handled. We are even thinking of inviting international bodies for the process to make sure that the process is thorough and it is clean, free, fair and transparent so that no one is accused of bias.”
He said the opposition party had gone through several changes, having lost the 2015 elections.
Secondus also alleged that the security agencies were working in collaboration with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to rig the 2019 elections in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said: “Our major concern based on the experience of the Ekiti election and other elections conducted by INEC is that INEC and the security agencies are working in collusion with security agencies to rig the election for the APC.
“It is easy to dismiss this allegation ordinarily, but the experience in Ekiti and other places has shown that what they plan to do is to make sure that within the urban cities, they try to be balanced.
“But immediately they get to the rural areas where there are no international observers, it becomes so brutal.”
Naij.com
