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A group of All Progressives Congress (APC) youth members in Ado Ekiti, have called for the cancellation of the party primary election held in Ekiti Central Senatorial District in the Ekiti state.
A petition signed by Olu Adebayo, the group’s coordinator, a copy of which was sent to President Muhammadu Buhari and National leadership of the APC, stated that the primary election which produced Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele and others was nothing but a mockery of democracy.
The group said the “process was devoid of all democratic ethics and values and against the direct primary which was ordered by the party.”
The petition reads in part:
WHY EKITI CENTRAL APC PRIMARY ELECTION SHOULD BE CANCELLED
We the entire 80,000-strong members of Ekiti Central All Progressives Congress (APC), hereby congratulate you on your emergence as our party’s flag bearer in 2019 election at a free and fair primary election held according to the democratic dictates of our great party.
Your emergence at a free and fair primary election is a reflection of a fair and equitable process which should run through our great party.
It is therefore in pursuit of a political process guided by credibility, integrity, equity, fairness, and justice, that we are constrained to alert you of the crudity that characterised the purported Friday 5 October APC Ekiti Central Senatorial primary election held in Ado – Ekiti.
Your Excellency, the so-called primary election which produced Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele and others was nothing but a mockery of democracy and a charade that does not represent the equitable process of electing who should represent the people and the interest of the party.
The process was devoid of all democratic ethics and values and against the direct primary which was ordered by the party. Sir, the fact is the APC Ekiti Central Primary election was NOT conducted within the rules of Direct Primary or Option A 4 where electorates will queue behind the aspirants of their choice.
Also, because of the premeditated choice of the particular aspirant, the party’s 2014 membership register was used instead of the current 2017 and 2018 register which would have taken care of new members who recently defected to the APC from other parties.
Also, on the day of the election, election materials were not made available in all the centers and voters were shocked to learn of the result of an election which was not conducted. They waited in vain for the arrival of the officials and materials.
At that point, people trooped to the streets to express their unreserved dissatisfaction with the situation. It is on record that on the same day in Ado Ekiti, aggrieved party members matched in peaceful demonstration to the party secretariat to express their rejection of the result of an election that never held.
What we had in Ekiti Central senatorial Primary election was daylight disfranchisement of eligible voters who joined the party from 2015 as none of them had their names in the 2014 party membership register which was used. In places that voting took place, the members of the party were told in no certain terms that their votes were useless as the results had been predetermined. The ward exco only brought photocopies of the result sheet as the originals were at party secretariat .
As a consequence, the candidate who emerged is a product of an unholy, filthy and unjust political process. Party members were denied their rights and an unpopular candidate they did not vote for, forced on them.
We are using this medium to appeal to your Excellency as the leader of the party who is not only a symbol and paragon of integrity but who emerged through a free and fair primary election to order for the cancellation of the Ado Ekiti APC Central Senatorial Primary which produced Bamidele and order for a new primary which should be supervised by a neutral Committee set up by the National Secretariat of the party .
We absolutely believe in the unity of our party. But this unity of purpose should not be sacrificed on the altar of the imposition of an unpopular candidate who emerged through a black-market process.
We therefore in the spirit of fairness, equity and democratic process, call for the cancellation of the purported primary held in Ekiti APC Central Senatorial District because of the following reasons: it lacked credibility; the majority of would-be voters were disenfranchised and use of 2014 membership register which prevented all those who joined the party from 2014 from participating in the election.
Your Excellency, this we humbly pray for and we hope our supplication shall be upheld in the light of justice for all.