Oyo North: Aspirants Allege Imposition, Call for Direct Primaries

Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan

Senatorial aspirants of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo North yesterday, raised the alarm over attempts to manipulate the sena-torial primaries, calling on the leadership of the party to quickly intervene and prevent the party from imminent collapse.

The aspirants accused a serving senator in the district of using illegal ways to impose a candidate without following the democratic lay-down rules

They made the allegation at the Iseyin District Grammar School (IDGS), Iseyin, condemning what they described as ways and manners some perceived bad elements of the party are handling the poll.

According to them, the primaries of the party that was scheduled to hold at the Iseyin District Grammar School, was shifted to an hotel within the senatorial district with just one aspirant out of five present.

Speaking on behalf of the aspirants, a member of the House of Repre-sentatives, representing Iseyin/Iwajowa/Kajola/ Itesiwaju Federal Con-stituency, Hon. Shina Peller decried the  development where a serving Senator openly seeks to manipulate the process.

Peller said:  “Iseyin District Grammar School which is to be the venue that we all  agreed for the primary election for APC House of Represent-atives and Senate was shifted to another venue without the prior consent of other aspirants.

“All the delegates have been here with their cards since 10:00 a.m. All the aspirants of both House of Representatives and Senate are all here with the exception of a serving Senator. But to our surprise, we were briefed that there is another kangaroo  primaries going on in one hotel along Oyo-Iseyin road.

“We  moved to the venue. It is unfortunate that we met them there with some unaccredited delegates as well as fake ballot papers, and an ac-creditation tag that has no passport.”

 This is absolutely wrong. We are supposed to follow the guidelines of our party, there should be  respect for our party and our people.

“This is totally unacceptable. We do not have trust in the whole process again. What we need now is a direct primary. Our people have been here since Thursday for the state House of Assembly primaries. They were also here on Friday for the House of Representatives primaries. They waited till 11:00 pm before they were chased away from the prem-ises.”

Also, in their own separate contributions, the Senatorial aspirants pre-sent at the venue, Hon. Saheed Alaran, Hon. Adebola Adeboyin and Hon. Shola Ogunbode, said they were not satisfied with the current situation of things in the district.

He appealed to the leadership of the party for quick intervention over the matter.