​Aggrieved Oyo PDP governorship aspirant threatens party over primaries

An Oyo state Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, governorship aspirant, Oluseyi Makinde​,​ has threatened that the party may not field a candidate for the 2015 gubernatorial election in the state.

Mr. Makinde, in a letter addressed to the national chairman of the PDP, Adamu Mu’azu, protested the outcome of the Oyo PDP governorship primary, which former Senate Leader, Tesl​i​m Folarin, won on Monday.

The letter, copied to the Presidency, was signed by Mr. Makinde’s lawyer, Ikechukwu Ezechukwu.

Mr. Makinde warned that if the PDP decided to wave aside the ruling of a Federal High Court in Abuja on a suit instituted by Adelowo Aremu, which recognised delegates that were produced in the rescheduled ward congress, the party may not field a candidate for the 2015 elections in the state.

The Federal High Court judgement, said to have been delivered last week, upheld the validity of the party’s last ward congress exercise organised to produce delegates to the primary election.

‎ “The terms of the said judgment are clear and unequivocal that no primary elections of PDP in Oyo State will be valid unless and except the delegates who voted at the said primary are those who were elected at the various wards in the state during the November ward delegates congress,” Mr. Makinde noted in his protest letter.

“The court further ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, not to accept, recognise or deal with any candidate whose nomination was derived from party primary in Oyo State based on the votes of delegates other than those elected at the ward congress as such primary stood null and void and of no effect.”

Meanwhile, a total of 211 delegates voted in the primary election on Monday with Mr. Folarin garnering 167 votes. A former governor of the state, Adebayo Alao-Akala, who has since rejected the exercise, and his erstwhile deputy, Hazeem Gbolarunmi, scored two and 12 votes respectively.

Only statutory delegates, comprising members of the state executive and the Board of Trustees in the state, the National Assembly members elected from the state, their counterparts in the House of Assembly and five delegates from all the 33 councils in the state, participated in the exercise.

The director of Mr. Makinde’s campaign strategy and mobilisation, Kehinde Ayoola, said the exercise disenfranchised 1,053 ad-hoc delegates elected through the November 24 congress.

“A faulty and insipid process threw up Senator Folarin in an orchestrated no-contest that was the so-called PDP guber primaries yesterday,” Mr. Ayoola said. “Senator Folarin emerged from a process that disenfranchised 1,053 delegates. The process was carried out in stubborn defiance of a court ruling.”