The Lagos State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has called on the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party to cancel the primary elections for Sunday in Lagos.
Addressing new men, the PDP Chairman in Lagos state, Philips Aivoji alongside other state executives of the party, governorship aspirants and party leaders in Ikeja, alleged that the ad hoc delegates list brought by the electoral committees for both primaries had been compromised.
According to reports by News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, he said that uncertainty, tension and apprehension trailed the conduct of the primaries as delegates and aspirants waited in various venues in the local government areas for the party’s election officials from its national headquarters. As of the time of filing this report, the national officers were yet to be seen at any of the venues across the state.
Mr Aivoji said: “The entire state executive committee of the Lagos state PDP and five of the six Gubernatorial aspirants, reject in its entirety, the Ad-Hoc delegate list brought by the electoral committee to Lagos state for the purpose of conducting the primaries.
“We are all shocked to see that the list does not reflect the authentic elected Ad-Hoc delegates as conducted by organs of the party at the ward level and supervised by the DSS and INEC.
“It is imperative to state that copies of the Ad-Hoc list that emanated from the state and submitted to INEC are completely different from the one brought by the committee for the purpose of the exercise.
“We realised that contrary to the provision of our great party and the electoral guidelines of the party, the election committee came to the state with list of venues and already chosen electoral officers.”
He said that at as the time of the news conference, both the the committee Chairman and Secretary of the Election Committee meant to conduct the State House of Assembly Primary election had not reported to the state chairman or state organ of the party.
“Up till this moment, we cannot reach out to the committee chairman and secretary, their telephones have either been switched off or unreachable.
“As law abiding members of our great party, we collectively reject this list and we cannot guarantee, free, fair and credible party primaries that we have sworn to conduct.
“The processes have been compromised ab initio and skewed to favour a particular aspirant.
“We, therefore, call for outright cancellation of the election exercise, doing otherwise will jeopardise the chances of the party at the 2023 polls,” Aivoji said.
Mr Aivoji added that: ”We want to know the person at the national level that gave them (electoral committee) the order not to consult the state executives in the exercise.
“We want to get this list right because as we speak, we are toying with the lives of millions of Lagos residents.
“We have been in the valley for so long, this is an opportunity for us to get it right to win the general elections that are coming in the state.
“We must douse the tension now because if we go on with this process, we cannot guarantee the safety of the committee that came from Abuja.”
NAN reports that some of the PDP governorship candidates at the conference included Ade Dosunmu, Olanrewaju Jim- Kamal, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, and Adedeji Doherty.
(NAN)
