Ebenezer Ikeyina, a former senator representing Anambra central in the senate has emerged the presidential candidate of Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Ikeyina won the SDP presidential ticket unopposed at a special national convention of the party held in Abuja on Tuesday.
Mike Odunrinde, chairman of the national convention organising committee, said the former lawmaker got 308 out of 311 votes cast.
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Supo Shonibare, SDP acting chairman while addressing the delegates at the convention, expressed optimism that the party’s candidates seeking various elective positions at the federal and state levels will emerged victorious at during the 2023 general elections.
Shonibare said SDP would hold an extraordinary convention for members of the other factional group, after the court delivers judgment on the party’s leadership crisis.
He said: “We will continue to extend olive branch to the other tendencies who we know were never elected and we are particularly mindful of the fate of our Candidates because I tried to tell my colleagues that we must appreciate that candidates that have come as SDP candidates many of them may not know the division within the party.
“Even if they know the division within the party if the INEC station in their state tells them that a particular group whom they are dealing with its very difficult for candidates not to go in that direction.
“So we must appreciate the challenges of candidates and we have offered an olive branch which the other tendencies — the other faction — if they had meant well for our political party, would have accepted.
“So we will continue to do all that we can to ensure that the candidates are not put in any more jeopardy. We will continue to do all we can to absorb them.
“We know that some people who are in the other faction who are not comfortable being in that faction who get in touch with from time to time; we know their challenges and the door is always open.
“After this event we expect to have an extraordinary national convention, which by God’s grace will overcome the problems that delegates have had coming here and which will include all the other tendencies of our party, provided they all accept the uniform constitution that all of us had fashioned together in 2018.”
