Confusion is looming in the All Progressives Congress(APC) in Ondo State as the party is set to commence accreditation of members who would vote at today’s party primary.
The crisis is due to the missing names of party members in the revalidated membership register, reports The Nation.
It was gathered that the names of some members of the Wards Electoral and Returning officers are missing in the membership register.
Members of the party in some wards in Ese-Odo, Odigbo and Okitipupa local government areas will not vote because their names were not in the register.
A Returning Officer in one of the Wards in Akure confirmed to our correspondent that his name is missing in the register.
“We know who is responsible for this. They removed our names and put the names of those loyal to one aspirant. We are going to tear that register when we got to the Ward for Accreditation,” he said.
Addressing stakeholders in Akure, Secretary of the Primary Election Committee, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, said the committee has no mandate to deliver any aspirant.
Senator Omo-Agege assured the governorship aspirants that the committee has no predetermined motive but to ensure the credibility of the primary and emergence of a candidate.
The former Deputy Senate President said accreditation of the 172,025 revalidated members of the party wpuld begin by 10am while voting began immediately by option A4.
Omo-Agege described the primary as a family affair and urged the aspirants to accept the outcome.
“You have produced well respected people from Ondo State. This is a family affair. One person will be the flag bearer but we will have 16 winners. We should treat this as a family affair. At the end of the exercise we should not see anybody as winners and losers. We want your cooperation because the party has to win the November election.
“Let us work together as a family. Whatever the outcome, let everybody accept it. We have no mandate to return anybody. Nobody will be oppressed or assisted. Whatever results they bring to the local government collation officers is what we are going to collate.
“We expect a seamless exercise, a very peaceful exercise. It’s a family contest. This is not the general election. The only difference here is that this is a progressive state—an APC state. We are determined to ensure that, at the end of the eight years of APC, we are about to start another eight years of another APC administration.
“We believe that whoever emerges as our flag bearer is going to win the general election, and at best, we have been able to assure all of the aspirants that there should be no bitterness.
“We don’t want to contest that at the end of the exercise we have difficulty bringing everybody together to win during elections. I think everyone is on board.
“We are here to conduct an election. I’m not here to resolve differences arising from the revalidation exercise. What I do know is that the register has been given to me, and in the register there is a very marginal, negligible difference between what we have in the membership register certified by INEC and the revalidation registered. I think the difference is slightly under $1,200.
“You should expect that as a party, we have the right to revalidate because people move in and out of a party every time in any event, and not everyone has been alive to financial commitment to the party.
“So as part of that revalidation exercise, we have been able to weed out people who were just nominal members, people who are not financial members. Only financial members are eligible to vote in this exercise. I think that is the major essence of that revalidation exercise.
“We have been giving a register here, and that register has numbers less than the original membership, so there should be no issue of over-voting because the total number of people that will vote are those on the revalidated register and not on the other one. We have already explained it to the aspirants, and I think they are comfortable with it.”
