Primaries: Lagos PDP exco, others reject ad-hoc delegates list from NWC

The Lagos State chapter of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) executive committee and five out of the six gubernatorial aspirants have rejected the ad-hoc delegate list brought from the national secretariat by the electoral committee to the state for the purpose of conducting the State House of Assembly and House of Representative primaries election.

A press conference held in Ikeja on Sunday and chaired by the state chairman of the party Philip Aivoji, the executivs stated that they were shocked to see that the list brought by the national officers for the conduct of the primaries did not reflect the authentic elected ad-hoc delegates as conducted by the organs of the party in state at ward level and supervised by the Department of State Service (DSS) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Aivoji noted the situation has led to a disruption of the primaries across the state and caused confusion among party members and aspirants.

According to him, “We realized 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. This is the responsibility of the State Executive committee (State Exco) of our party and therefore totally unacceptable.

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“Also the committee chairman and the secretary of the election committee meant to conduct the state House of Assembly primary election have 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.”

Aivoji added, “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 favor a particular aspirant.

“We therefore, call for outright cancellation of the election exercise. Doing otherwise would not only jeopardize the chances of the party at the polls. It will also lead to a plethora of endless litigations afterwards”.