…..Party Chairman warns that external influence will plunge the party into crisis
Stakeholders of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Igalamela/Odolu Local Government chapter, has released the authentic list of all 31 elected delegates for the party’s forthcoming governorship primary election.
In a press statement on Wednesday, Salifu Attai Ndanusa, Igalamela/Odolu PDP Chairman stated that delegate ward congresses conducted across the 10 wards in Igalamela/Odolu LGA followed all laid down procedures of the party rules and regulations.
He explained that 3 delegates were duly elected through consensus for each of the 10 wards in the local government.
He announced the names of all elected delegates in each of the wards including one national delegate totaling 31 was monitored by INEC, the security agencies across the 21 Local Governments of the State and signed by all the team-lead and counter-signed by congress election committee leader Sen. Abdul Ningi.
The stakeholders warned that any attempt by the party, at the national level, to alter the delegates’ lists submitted by the wards through the State chapter shall be resisted vehemently and with every available legal option possible.
He also warned that the party in the State must resist all kinds of external influence and “do the right thing, which is to use only the delegates lists presented and duly signed by the party chairmen and their excos, from across the 21 Local Government chapters of the party in the State, no more, no less”.
He warned that the party in the State succumbing to external influence will be a recipe for “avoidable crisis”.
He also called for consensus building among the aspirants in a bid to make it easy for reconciliation in case of possible post-election rancour within the party.
He called on all the aspirants to play by the laid-down rules of the party for the primary election processes and to “avoid trying to cut corners in an attempt to get the ticket via backdoor means”. He warned that any aspirant trying to get the governorship ticket through the backdoor will only end up plunging the party in the State into a “state of crisis that may outrightly consume the chances of the PDP in the November Governorship election”.
He further said “the stakes are too high. We must get it right as a party. With unity, the PDP in Kogi State will defeat APC in November”.
The PDP chairman’s warnings are coming on the heels of rumours that the PDP in Kogi State has come under heavy external influence and antics to have the delegates lists switched and manipulated, in the build up to the primary election.
Recently, some elders of the party in the State had to call out former Vice President Atiku Abubakar over concerns that certain aspirants may be using his name to try inducing the national secretariat of the party to accept delegates lists that are different from the ones that emerged from the delegates election processes that happened across the Local Government chapters and wards in in the State.
See the Igalamela/Odolu PDP delegates lists as attached.