Victor Ochei, immediate past speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Delta and a governorship aspirant seeking to contest on the platform of the All progressives Congress, has called for the outright cancellation of penultimate Sunday’s governorship primary held at the Federal College of Education (Technical), Asaba.
He stated that the exercise was skewed to favour a particular aspirant, an action which he described as a flagrant infraction of the party’s primary guidelines.
Ochei alleged hoarding of delegates’ list from aspirants, as well as inadequate security arrangement, among others, as some of the issues that warranted the cancellation of the exercise.
He said: “The national chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole had 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 canvass for their votes.
He further stated that the Chairman of the Nomination Panel, General Lawrence Onoja, (rtd) confirmed that the national chairman provided a list of delegates at 7:30pm on Septe.mber 29, 2018, a few hours before the primary, in which only Great Ogboru, one of the aspirants, confirmed he had access to at a meeting with the panel.
“In other words, there was the ulterior motive of tilting the process to a particular aspirant’s advantage,” he said.
He also alleged 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.”
He continued: “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.”
