As preparations for the local government polls in Benue State gather
momentum, some aspirants under the ruling party, the All Progressive
Congress (APC) have registered their displeasure over what they
described as
“dearth of internal democracy” in the party, allegedly
being perpetrated by the State Chairman, Abba Yaro.
Addressing newsmen in Makurdi, the state capital on Wednesday, Hon.
Adogo Friday Iwodi, Hon. James Ediri Akor and Hon. Sunday Joseph, all
chairmanship aspirants in Ogbadibo LGA, also accused their co-aspirant,
James Simon Akola of forging the APC certificate of clearance.
According to the statement jointly issued by the trio, Akola alegedly
flaunted a certificate of clearance on his social media page on
Wednesday, even though the party screening committee and the state
secretariat denied issuing clearance to any aspirant in the entire
state.
“We were four aspirants who participated in the screening exercise which lasted till Saturday last week.
“We were expecting list of successful aspirants, with clearance from
the committee, only to see Akola displaying a clearance, purportedly
procured from the party secretariat.
“We hurriedly besieged the party office and were shocked to hear that
no certificate of clearance had been given to any aspirant in the
entire state.
“The screening committee declared that they were not done with the
whole process yet. Where did Akola get his clearance from? We demand an
investigation.
“By the forgoing and with the open threat issued by the state
chairman during a stakeholders’ meeting in Ogbadibo on 11th April 2017,
that no aspirant would scale through the screening except his annointed
candidate, Akola, we are now compelled to state that we have lost
confidence in the Chief John Ochoga led screening committee and the
leadership of Abba Yaro”, the statement read in part.
While accusing the state chairman, Yaro of working against the party
guideline by unduly projecting Akola against the interest of the entire
party stakeholders and members in Ogbadibo, the aspirants called on
Governor Samuel Ortom and other leaders in the state, to as a matter of
urgency, intervene in Ogbadibo primaries, in order to salvage the party.
No comments:
Post a Comment