APC holds primaries in Lagos, Imo States today

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has announced the postponement of its governorship primary election which was earlier scheduled to hold on Sunday to Monday (today) over ‘logistic’ constraints in both Lagos and Imo States.

The National Chairman of the party, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole disclosed this in Abuja on Saturday while inaugurating 21-member National Convention Committee headed by the Oyo State Governor, Abiola Ajimobi.

Oshiomhole also revealed that one hundred and seventy-seven aspirants are currently jostling to win and fly the party’s Governorship flag in the 2019 general election to govern their respective States.

He said: “We have only 29 vacancies for governors and to fill these vacancies, we have distinguished Nigerians, men and women, about 177 that applied.

“This does not suggest any unusual level of political or executive unemployment. It just points to the level of interest, commitment, passion and above all the confidence that people have in the APC”.

The party Chairman however noted that the governorship primaries will still hold on Sunday in 27 States as earlier scheduled assuring that all party members across the country that the exercise will be free, fair and credible, urging them to support whoever emerges after the primaries to get final victory at the general elections.

While justifying the disqualification of some aspirants, he said that the party carefully chose who will be its flag-bearer thorough screening exercise for those who purchased the party forms for the governorship position.

Recall that two serving Ministers – Adebayo Shittu, Ministry of Communications and his counterpart at Women Affairs Ministry, Sen. Aisha Alhassan who were aspiring to flag the party’s flag in Oyo and Taraba States respectively were disqualified for different reasons.

According to Oshiomhole, “We have tried as much as we can to carry out a thorough screening exercise in ways that will enable us benefit from the recent things that have happened in our party that some of us believe we can learn some positive lessons from, and have heard of the implications of such actions and reviewed the way in which we select people who contest elections on our platforms.

“We have to build a mass movement that is grounded in the hearts of the Nigerian people, membership-driven and to do that we must service our internal democracy.

We have to move away from top-down approach to decision making and develop a bottom-top approach so that the ordinary Nigerian who is a member of our party will have a sense of ownership, involvement, participation and equation.

“Now, if we must sustain this tradition, obviously we must begin to look beyond paper qualifications in terms of who is eligible to be fielded on the platform of our party.

“It is in view of this and several other reasons that we found ourselves unable to clear otherwise two very eminent Nigerians who are members of our party, which shows that we are balanced, sensitive because there are issues that might even be right in the eyes of the law but are immoral and they are indecent in the eyes and in the minds of very ordinary, decent human beings.

“So, based on this commitment, we disqualified two eminent Nigerians and I am glad that we found the courage to do so. We cannot continue to preach discipline and harbour people who in our view conduct themselves in a way that suggest that they do not have those core values that should bind us together as a political party.

“So, stepping Sunday to conduct elections, you have a duty to sustain the core values of the APC which is to ensure that we conduct transparent primaries and our constitution which is the basis of the contract between members of the APC to vie for couple of offices and our National Executive Committee is adhered to”.