2015: Ondo aspirants threaten to work against PDP

The crisis in the Ondo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party assumed a new dimension on Sunday with the party aspirants in the state threatening to work against the success of the party in 2015.

The aggrieved Ondo aspirants are those vying for tickets to contest elections into the state House of Assembly, Federal House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Chairman, Ondo PDP Aspirants Forum, Femi Adekanmbi, who is also a contestant for the House of Representatives, told journalists in Abuja that the party should be allowed to conduct its primaries without interference if it must be successful in the forthcoming elections.

Adekanmbi, who spoke for all the aspirants, said some senior party officials had been acting against the dictates of the party’s constitution, warning that the PDP would lose in 2015 if its national body fails to intervene promptly.

He said, “We want the public to be informed of the impending loss of the PDP in Ondo State. When the result will be out on February 15, 2015 showing the loss of the PDP in Ondo, nobody should be surprised.

“The people of Ondo State are ready to take their destiny in their hands; you cannot handpick and impose on us. This is to sensitise Nigerians because there is going to be protest vote against the PDP in the 2015 elections.”

Adekanmbi also alleged that the membership of the party by the Ondo State governor, Olusegun Mimiko, was not genuine because he did not register in the party according to the PDP’s constitution.

He said, “Governor Olusegun Mimiko joined the party on October 2, 2014 and that was when the PDP congress was about 29 days away. Under the party’s constitution, Chapter 2, Section 8, subsection 1 to 11, a person that joins PDP within 30 days before congress cannot partake in the congress.

“This is because the party’s register would have been closed a month before congress. The implication is that the people who came to the party with Mimiko are not members of the PDP, including the governor, because they have not been registered according to our constitution.”

He explained that a panel set up by the party’s national body disqualified original members of the Ondo PDP from contesting political positions after the politicians had spent huge sums of money on their campaigns.

The Ondo aspirants’ forum chairman said, “House of Assembly aspirants bought forms for N1.25m; House of Representatives, N2.5m and Senate for N4m. After buying these forms, a screening panel was constituted by the national PDP and was sent to Ondo State. When the panel got to Ondo, it disqualified all the original PDP members and approved people who are just joining the party. Now, that is the problem.

“The panel was hijacked and they took it to Government House instead of the PDP secretariat and wrote disqualification certificates for our members and held a meeting and signed our mandates away.

“We want to totally disagree with the meeting that was chaired by the Senate President, David Mark, with Dr. Mimiko and some of our so-called leaders on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa.”

He argued that nobody had the right to dissolve the party’s executive council in the state, local governments and wards.

“We are pursuing our case in court to get to a logical conclusion. We have notified INEC through the court why they must not recognise the Labour Party aspirants who claim to be PDP members in Ondo,” Adekanmbi said.