Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, has said that the difficulty confronting the All Progressives Congress(APC) in winning Saturday’s elections and remaining ones is due to the crisis arising from its primaries.
The governor was responding to questions after casting his votes at Ijebu Owo, in Owo Local Government Area on Saturday.
He said the 2019 elections would have been an easy one for the party, but for the crisis which rocked the party after disagreements over the selection of candidates for the National Assembly elections.
Akeredolu had been at war with the national leader of the party, Bola Tinubu, and the national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, after his preferred candidates were left in the cold in the primaries.
Some of them, including his ally Dr. Tunji Abayomi left the party to contest in the Action Alliance (AA), the party which won emphatically in Akeredolu’s polling unit in the senatorial election on Saturday.
The governor had been accused of anti-party activities by members of the APC for supporting the AA against the candidates of the APC in the National Assembly elections.
“Whether we like it or not, I have my views about the primaries, I have my views about how it was handled and I maintain my position that we could have done it better,” Akeredolu said.
“This election would have been a walk in the park for us. We would have just walked into victory.
“We are going to be victorious no doubt, but we had to put a lot of energy because of a lot of problems that came out of the primaries and I want to believe God that we have overcome those problems now, but we still have problems.
“We don’t have candidates in Rivers, we don’t have candidates in Cross River, Zamfara is just coming in. Anybody who is honest in APC will tell you that the primaries caused us some problems.”
He also lauded Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections, particularly the turnout, saying INEC should be given the benefit of the doubt that it would deliver credible elections at the end of the day.
He wished that the peaceful conduct witnessed in his polling unit was replicated across the other units across the state.
YOMI AYELESO, Akure
